All Who Wander
by Bigsciencybrain
Summary: A simple assignment to collect a new Slayer sends Xander into the depths of Africa, traveling the path of those who have been lost.
1. Libya

**Title: **All Who Wander

**Author:** Aeneas

**Fandom:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer

**Rating:** T, language and violence.

**Disclaimer:** It's Joss's sandbox, I just play there.

**Timeline:** Post-Chosen.

**Summary:** Written for the _Scatterlings and Orphanages_ Africander Ficathon. A simple assignment to collect a new Slayer sends Xander into the depths of Africa, traveling the path of those who have been lost.

**Libya**

It wasn't hard to imagine what the Mediterranean would have looked like hundreds of years ago, dotted with triremes ferrying gold, spices, and anything a Roman heart could desire. Rows of oars dipping in and out of the water with sails catching the driving winds; it certainly wasn't the fastest method of travel known to man. Given the turbulence Xander Harris had experienced since leaving London, he wasn't convinced that flying was the better option.

Squirming in the uncomfortable airplane seat, he pulled his eye away from the glittering Mediterranean below him and looked for something else to occupy his mind. Giles had informed him that he was very lucky to be flying in rather than the methods of border crossing that had been utilized under the international air embargo. No hiding under canvas bags in dusty jeeps for him. He was waltzing through Libya's front door with all the chutzpah of the glorified Labrador retriever he was. There might be a Slayer in disease-ridden jungle? Send Xander. There's a revolution going on? Xander laughed in the face of military coups.

He barely managed to bring one girl home before they sent him globe trotting off to collect another and somehow he ended up with all the jobs that ended in Africa. It had been exciting at first, with the lions and the crocodiles and the people who made clicking noises with their tongues. But the real Africa never made it into the brochure and there were more days than not that he'd give anything to be back in the land of indoor plumbing.

A garbled voice speaking Arabic came over the intercom and either announced the beginning of their descent or that the snack cart would be making the rounds with peanuts and fruit cups. The flight attendant had passed by him earlier without a word or glance but Giles had warned him about that as well. Just because airlines were flying from London to Tripoli didn't mean frosty relations between Libya and the western world had thawed. It had taken Giles the better part of six months to get Xander a passport and a visa that meant he wouldn't be arrested upon setting foot in the county. Since being an American would get him exactly nowhere in this country, he'd been given a crash course on being stuffy and wearing tweed. Of course, defeat of the attempts to make Xander more British had been inevitable. It ended with Giles pinching his nose in that irritated fashion of his and proclaiming that Xander was butchering the language to such a degree that even Spike would have been appalled.

That left Xander with an American passport, a visa, and only his wits about him. There was also the eye patch, which not only worked as an impromptu costume at Halloween parties; it also gave him a certain air of danger. This was someone who had lost an eye and lived to tell the tale. People wondered, people whispered. Had he been captured by revolutionaries? A wild animal encounter perhaps. He smiled at his own musings. Maybe they just didn't want to look at the poor man who'd lost an eye in a work related incident. Whatever it was, the world didn't seem to pay him mind as he went about his merry way.

He fastened his seatbelt as the airplane began to bank, swooping over the city of Tripoli like a great albatross in search of a perch. Beneath him were towers in various shades of off-white, contrasted with the dark green speckles of date palms lining roads and the gray of the highways. Even the coastline was creamy beige and sparkling in the sunlight, as though a giant toddler had gone wild with the pastel crayons. It was a far cry from the dense green of the rainforest and the retina searing cinnamon of the desert. Towering skyscrapers spoke of the wealth and prosperity that came with the oil pumping out of what would otherwise be useless land.

The touchdown was uneventful and he bade a less than fond farewell to the dirty seatbelt that had refused to clasp properly. Little good it would have done him had it been an interesting landing. He kept his mouth shut and his eye toward the ground at a forty-five degree angle as the passengers disembarked. Low enough to be unthreatening to the armed guards watching over their progress through the airport but high enough to see anything short of an attack by seagull. Off to the side of the runway, he caught a glimpse of what could have been pieces of military aircraft but a stoic glare from one of the guards wearing Top Gun glasses kept him from looking too hard.

There was the familiar jostle of elbows at the luggage collection and he was glad for the single, army style duffle slung over his shoulder. He could tell from the latch that it had been opened and searched. If they wanted to rifle through his underwear, more power to them.

Passport and visa in hand, he began the slow crawl through the queues and hoops: security check, metal detectors, all the while under surveillance of the men with shiny sunglasses. Voices around him spoke Arabic in rapid-fire sentences that were both elegant and chaotic as the painted letters adorning the walls and posters. Several of the far walls had patches of mosaic or painted murals peeking out from beneath the propaganda. He was definitely not in Kansas anymore.

With his one eye open wide, he was still trying to soak up all the nuances of another foreign airport when he arrived at the older gentleman who would decide if he could stay in the country. Giles had assured him that all the paperwork was in order and hopefully the decision wouldn't be based on what the man had eaten for lunch. He didn't smile, merely slid his papers through the opening in the pocked glass and waited patiently.

"Maa ismuk?" The man asked as he peered at the passport and visa.

"Alexander Harris." The next questions that rattled off of the man's tongue were beyond Xander's ability to infer their meaning or keep up with the vowel sounds. Hoping he wasn't completely butchering the pronunciation, he tried Arabic, "hal tatahaddath al'ingiliiziyya?"

The passport officer eyed him with newfound intensity. "I speak English. What is your purpose to this country?"

"Tourist," Xander answered matter-of-factly. Keep it simple. Giles had all but pounded the mantra into his skull, simple, straightforward, and no funny business.

That seemed to satisfy the man and he stamped his passport with vigor. "Welcome to Libya. Please enjoy our beautiful country."

"Shukran." Xander collected his papers and moved out of the queue.

One more country in a long list of countries where he didn't have a clue what was going on. The major disadvantage of not speaking the native language fluently was that he could be listening to someone talk about removing his limbs and think they were discussing stew recipes. Fluency was a relative term as well. Dialects varied with shifting sands and twisted the already twisty sounds around in his mouth until his tongue was tied in knots at the back of his throat.

He dug the guidebook out of his duffle bag and started at the chapter about not offending the natives. Despite his very western cargo pants and lightweight cotton shirt, he was pleased to see that he blended well in the smattering of tourists and locals alike. Forget vampires, the Gap was eventually going to rule the world with their classic fit button up shirts and relaxed fit jeans. He wiggled his toes in his sandals, already feeling bits of sand slipping in between them. The lack of an ever-creeping Sahara was the best thing about England.

"Mr. Harris?" The voice startled him out of his guidebook reverie and he was relieved to see a young Arab man standing beside him. He was dressed casually in jeans and an open neck shirt of soft linen, just another teenager collecting tourists for sightseeing trips. In fact, Giles had informed Xander that registering with a vacation group was the only way into Libya but he had arranged for him to join the group that would travel to where his Libyan contact would be. Seeing Xander's recognition, he motioned for him to follow the tour group assembling at the entrance doors.

"Salaam aleikum," the young man said as he reached Xander's side.

"Aleikum as-salaam." The greeting seemed to either please or amuse the man and Xander wondered if he'd managed to emphasize the wrong syllables again. A folded newspaper appeared in the man's hands and was handed casually to him with only the faintest of smiles.

"Shukran," Xander took the newspaper. In the time it took to glance down at the paper the young man vanished into the crowd and he was left with printed Arabic soup. Wistfully, he thought back to simpler days that didn't involve covert hand offs in airport terminals. He tucked the paper into the guidebook and joined the tour group. At least two of the other tourists were obviously British, middle-aged, and more than a bit overwhelmed by their surroundings.

"I don't suppose they can stop us from speaking English, do you?" the woman nervously asked the man next to her.

"Of course not, dear." The man gave Xander the wearied look of a bedraggled husband. "It's not as if we can just start speaking Arabic, is it?"

"I'm sure it will be fine," Xander assured her. "They'll probably just think we're silly tourists and talk behind our backs. So…what are you excited to see?" He tapped his guidebook for emphasis. This model of Xander came complete with peppy attitude, bright smile, and a liberal dash of naivety that was always a big hit with the older female audience.

"Oh, the ruins at Leptis Magna are said to spectacular." She beamed at him and held out her hand. "Where are my manners? I'm Livvy Marchant and this is my husband, Edward."

"Xander Harris." He shook their hands quickly.

"I say, you're a Yank." Edward seemed to light up as he recognized Xander's poorly disguised accent.

"Don't tell anyone but yes, I'm guilty of being born on the wrong side of the ocean." He winked at Livvy before motioning toward the tour guide, who had finally arrived and was shepherding the group out the doors.

"Smart lad. Being an American isn't what it used to be with today's political climate."

Xander smiled noncommittally and redirected the conversation back to the many attractions Libya had to offer. "What about this Leptis Magna? Do you think they'll let us roam about the ruins?"

"I do hope so." Livvy dug her itinerary out of her oversized traveler's bag. "Did you remember sunscreen, Mr. Harris? I dare say I brought enough for the entire tour if you happened to forget."

"I'm covered but I'll keep you in mind if I run out." He offered to help Edward with loading their suitcases into the storage bins of the bus. Rule number one of being a tourist was to make friends with the other tourists, especially the middle-aged British women who usually carried tea, biscuits, and occasionally chocolatey goodness in their handbags.

* * *

None of the tiny pictures in his guidebook prepared Xander for the magnitude of Leptis Magna. At its height, the city had contained eighty thousand people and served as a major shipping port between Rome and the heart of Africa. Once the defensive walls fell to a massive earthquake and raiding Vandals, the desert had swept in to overtake the city. Sand preserved the mosaics and murals, keeping the Roman city mostly intact beneath the shifting surface. 

Standing archways imbued a silent grace to what would otherwise be stacks of carved limestone and provided hints of what the ancient city must have looked like. The tour group wandered through the parts of the ruins that had been excavated and were open to tourists. A spacious amphitheatre, extensive public baths, even a racetrack whispered of a history filled with life. Winged griffins guarded one of the archways and the columns of the basilica were a playground for intricately carved cherubs waving palm fronds. He tried to keep track of who had built what arch and which God had the temple with rows of Corinthian columns.

The wide brimmed hat kept the burning sun off of his face and neck but nothing could keep the heat of the desert away for long. After a while, he got used to the taste of salt and sand on his lips when he took a sip from his water bottle. Their group was moving slowly around the ocean facing side of the ruins when he spotted the young man from the airport. A quick look at his watch and he saw that he was right on time for the clandestine meeting that had been scheduled via newspaper hand off. He wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to being handed innocuous objects and having bizarre notes fall out of them later. It was just his luck that one of these days someone would hand him a shoebox with a bomb inside.

He pretended to be fascinated by one of the wall sculptures and drifted away from the rest of the group toward what had once been the atrium of the marketplace. The corridors within allowed some shaded respite from the fierce sun. He whistled softly to himself as he explored and waited for the young man to appear.

A few minutes passed, giving Xander time to investigate more sculpture and consult his guidebook for trivia. He heard footsteps coming toward him and hushed voices speaking Arabic. Hopefully one of them spoke English with more skill than he spoke Arabic. Two men turned the corner and the familiar young man greeted Xander warmly. His companion was older, with graying hair, and bore a striking resemblance to the younger man.

"Mr. Harris, this is my father. He does not speak English, I will translate."

"Great. What's your name? Maa ismuk?" The stilted Arabic seemed to make the older man slightly less hostile toward him.

"I am Hassan, my father is Muhammed."

"Good start, pleased to meet you. Since I'm here for a girl, I'm guessing that girl would be a member of your family." Xander frowned when Muhammed seemed to get more agitated after Hassan translated what he'd said. "Everything okay?"

"My father believes that it does not honor our family to speak of my sister to a stranger and a Westerner," Hassan explained apologetically. "It is most important that you understand. My sister was to be married into a good Muslim family, Mr. Harris, but she is gone. Disappeared. I do not believe she would leave to avoid the marriage."

Xander tried not to let his confusion show but he was completely lost as to how this pertained to finding lost Slayers. "You think she was kidnapped?" The older man began speaking in Arabic fast enough that he only caught a few of the more familiar words. Hassan responded just as emphatically, leaving Xander to watch the argument with growing bewilderment.

"Mr. Harris." Hassan finally said something to quiet his father and turned back to Xander. "My sister is, how do you say…different."

"And that would be why I'm here. I'm assuming there's some super strength and speed going on?" He breathed a sigh of relief. At least this hadn't been just a wild goose chase.

"She has become strong as a man. Stronger. It has been a great burden on my family; it is unnatural. It is against Allah."

Xander turned the scenario over in his head, trying to fit the pieces together and form a theory of the girl's life. Very few of the Slayers' families had been jumping for joy when their child began manifesting inhuman powers. Mostly he found it to be based in fear, but at least this girl's family was still trying to find her whether or not she had frightened and shamed them. However, it also made it more likely that she had disappeared of her own free will rather than being kidnapped. Dishonoring her family and alienating her fiancée never went over well in the teenage girl bracket.

"She is my sister still, Mr. Harris," Hassan continued with his voice lowered. "I do not believe, as my father does, that she has sought to bring shame on our family by refusing to marry. I believe that she has been taken. Before she disappeared, there were men who came to our village asking questions. I did not think on it until your Mr. Giles contacted me."

The plot was thickening like milk left out to curdle and Xander was pretty sure it would soon be just as unpleasant. A few of the recruited Slayers had mentioned being approached with offers from an unknown organization. It was possible they were connected to the sophisticated robots executing strategic assaults on well-known elements of the demon world. And while they might have the same enemies, whoever was behind the androids had differing methods and, most likely, a very different endgame in mind. Mutual enemies did not mutual friends make.

"Tell me about these men. Were they foreigners?" It could also have been Wolfram and Hart trying to wedge another foothold in the world after Angel and crew took out their Los Angeles branch. What better way than recruiting their own Slayers? The groups in Rome and London had discussed the frightening idea in depth, almost as much as the topic of what exactly they were going to do with all those Slayers themselves.

"Can you find my sister?" Hassan was interrupted by his father once again and another argument sprung up between the two of them. After it passed, he had another question for Xander. "Can you stop what has happened to her?"

For every Slayer and every family, the same question was asked in a hundred different languages and a thousand different ways. Could he put her back the way she was, take away her power and make her the girl she used to be. He used to wish he could tell them what they wanted to hear. Seeing the disappointment and fear in their eyes, and knowing that their daughter could also see it, was something that he never became accustomed to. Instead of the truth, he learned to be very serious and tell them that he didn't know if he could help. It was a lie that allowed them hope and gave him time to convince them it wasn't the work of evil spirits or the devil.

"I'll need to see your sister first," he answered cautiously. There was always the chance that she wasn't a Slayer, merely a very strong girl. Until he had proof, he would let them hope. "Can you tell me anything about the men who came to your village?"

"They were Americans." Hassan's eyes widened suddenly and his body jerked as though he'd been struck from behind. Blood sprayed hot and thick as a bullet tore through Muhammed's throat. The man collapsed to the ground like a rag doll as Hassan sunk helplessly to his knees beside him.

Xander dove for cover behind a pile of toppled stone, the round meant for him popping like a champagne cork. The heels of his hands scraped across the limestone as he scrambled, bits of rock exploding into dust and shrapnel for each bullet striking the stone above him. He looked back to see Hassan's lifeless eyes staring after him, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and spreading out from the bullet wound in his back. Nauseated and shaking, he scrabbled sideways like a crab down the inner corridor until he reached the far side of the ancient marketplace.

He took off at a dead run along the rows of columns, his sandals slapping as he ran. A bullet whistled past his head and sent him ducking behind a fractured sculpture. He whipped his head from side to side, compensating for the loss of peripheral vision on his left side. Visibility was a joke with the piles of chiseled rock and columns filling the landscape. He kept low, dashing from hiding spot to hiding spot as he made his way through the ruins toward the entrance where the tour bus would be waiting.

The presence of other people might not deter his attacker but he'd take that chance. Regardless of whether or not the assassin followed him, an American involved with two dead bodies in Libya could only end badly. The dusty, battered bus finally came into view through another ornate archway and he made the last dash with his lungs burning.

"Xander?" Livvy Marchant stopped folding her map and stared at him as he skidded to a halt beside the bus.

"Am I late?" he panted and made a show of checking his watch. "This thing is always losing time. Boy…I'm glad I didn't get left behind."

"Are you all right? Dear boy, you could have been hurt running like that!" She clucked at him as she handed him a handkerchief to wipe his face. "Do you need a bottled water? Running about in this heat, you'll get heatstroke."

"I'm good." Thankfully his brightly colored shirt camouflaged the spray of blood and the dust coating his cargo pants covered anything but the color of the sandstone. He winced at the jabbing pain in his side, only slightly paranoid that it was the sensation of a bullet piercing his skin. Waving her off, he readjusted his travel pack and fished out his own bottled water. Keep it simple. Simple, straightforward, and nothing resembling the truth. "What do you think of the place? Bet it was pretty cool when the Romans were here."

She didn't look quite ready to drop the subject of his strange behavior but finally gave him a tolerant smile. "Yes, it must have been wonderful. Did you see the archway built to honor Emperor Severus?"

"Is that the one with the big, winged things?" He drained his water bottle and tucked it back into his pack. His thoughts were a million miles away as she corrected his arch identification and began rattling off whole chapters of the history of the Roman Empire.

His heartbeat had nearly returned to normal when the tour guide began to call for the group to board the bus. A bus seat had never felt so comforting and despite straining, he couldn't see anyone suspicious lurking in the ruined city. None of the guide's words managed to find their way through his jumbled thoughts on the ride back to Tripoli and his stomach was still threatening to heave what was left of his lunch all over the seat in front of him.

It wasn't the first time they'd had trouble collecting one of the girls, but it was the first time he'd seen two of her family members shot down in front of him and the first time he'd been unable to do anything but run away. Even the options of notifying the family or burying the bodies were lost to him. This wasn't the time or the country for him to make an appearance on the local authorities' radar. All he could do was return to the tour hotel, make contact with Giles, and hope for all he was worth that Buffy and the Brain would be able to think of a plan.

He functioned on autopilot, laughing and making idle small talk with the rest of his tour group until the bus arrived at the hotel and he managed to slip away. Shaking fingers sabotaged his hurry to get out of the blood stained clothing. A fresh pair of cargo pants and another loose cotton shirt only marginally decreased the sick feeling in his stomach.

There wasn't time to use the hotel phone before he was supposed to meet the group for dinner. He forced himself to take several deep breaths. The dead weren't going to be any less dead in an hour and he couldn't risk appearing as anything other than a bumbling tourist.

"Walk in the park, Harris," he told the image in the cracked bathroom mirror. "You've seen worse. Vampires, demons, Hell Gods. What's a few bullets? Stick with the crowd and none of them will have your name on it."

He managed to keep his smile and carefree stride out of the hotel and while the group meandered through the nearby souk. None of the merchants seemed interested in bartering, standing with their arms crossed and passing the time before they could close up their narrow booths. There were rugs and lengths of decorative cloth that he wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with even if he did buy a few yards. No trinkets or frivolous items adorned the booths, only the necessities of living. By the time he escaped the claustrophobia inducing corridors, he'd noticed the ubiquitous presence of the color green. All the shampoos and soaps in his small bathroom had been wrapped in green packaging, all the vendors' booths were painted the same, and along with the ever-present gaze from Qaddahfi's portraits, it seemed to be a national decorating requirement.

The city of Tripoli itself was torn between ancient vibrancy and modern desolation. He saw no billboards telling him to eat right or drink Coca-Cola, only more pictures of the head of government and a few cartoonish men smiling as they worked on an assembly line. Buildings that had looked impressive from the air were rendered harsh and utilitarian once on the ground; rising up around him with all the personality of giant concrete iceboxes. He tried not to look at the ground, which was covered almost entirely with discarded candy wrappers and garbage bags of fly delight. Apparently beauty was even more subjective than usual in Libya.

Dinner was to be had at a small restaurant with mosaic walls barely visible in the dusky interior and rather than ordering from a menu, he was informed that he would get what every tourist got for a meal. Considering that the next booth over ended up with pan-fried fish complete with eyeballs and guts intact, he was relieved to get a slice of date bread, bottled water, and a small bowl of spicy vegetables and rice. The small restaurant seemed unnaturally silent and his fellow travelers whispered their tales of adventure, trying to simultaneously achieve the Western tradition of conversation over a meal and respect the silence of the Libyans around them. He heard stories of parts of Tripoli that weren't bogged down with concrete and trash. In the Italian quarter, one could find Belgian chocolate, clothes that hadn't come from the seventies in shops playing Western music over their tinny speakers, and fewer eyes watching every move.

It struck Xander as surreal to be sitting in a darkened restaurant of a totalitarian state with people from all corners of continental Europe. People who knew nothing of vampires and Slayers or why he was really in Libya touring ancient ruins. They hadn't stood beneath carved stone archways and watched two innocent people die. He wanted to say he was numb to violent death almost as much as he wanted to say he wasn't. Was becoming insensitive to human tragedy a fate worse than a bullet? That, he thought as he looked around at the somber faces of the native Libyans around them, was an ironically relevant question.

The world he walked was different. He'd known from that first day in the library and watched it confirmed over and over. There were days when it was subtle. When he found himself sitting in a group of people pretending to be something else but never quite able to believe his own lie. Which was the real Xander? The mask he wore for the normal world or the mask he wore for the world where things went bump in the night.

Movement shook him out of his metaphysical stupor; the group gathering up their belongings and heading back to the hotel before nightfall settled. It had been a long day of traipsing about a foreign country that felt like an oven even in the shade. He stocked up on bottled water and made some excuse about calling his family. Two operators and ten minutes of waiting for a connection that wasn't ninety percent static later and he heard Giles' voice faintly through the receiver.

"G-man! How's England? Cold and rainy?" He glanced around the lobby to make sure no one was within earshot before pulling into the corner as far as possible. The man who guarded the metal detector at the front door and the suit watching people get on and off of the elevator both seemed too bored to bother listening in.

"Xander, have you located the girl?"

"There's been a little bit of a complication." He hesitated and took a deep breath. "I met with her father and brother. They said she disappeared after some men in black started nosing around."

"Do they believe she was kidnapped?"

"One did, one didn't. Look, Giles. There's something else." Eye closed and counting to ten helped ease some of the nausea. "They're dead. Shot right in front of me. Pretty sure I was supposed to be lying face down in the sand right now." The silence on the other end of the line didn't do much to make him feel at ease. "Giles? You there?"

"We'll send back-up." There was the briskly concerned tone that always meant the situation had just gone to hell. "It may take awhile but I might be able to pull some strings. Stay away from exposed areas and continue with the tour. Notify me if anything changes."

"Sure thing, Giles."

"And Xander. Do be careful."

"Careful's my middle name." He felt slightly better after hanging up the phone. Sometimes the scariest part of collecting newly minted Slayers was being alone in a strange country where his white skin stood out like a neon sign. There were hundreds of languages he didn't speak and hundreds of customs he couldn't hope to learn.

He believed in the work. This was a chance to make sure none of the girls had to walk that road alone, never had to hide under the covers and not know what the monsters outside were. They could know why they were different, why their world had suddenly gone topsy-turvy without warning. It was the chance to make that difference, to make sure the girls knew they weren't evil or possessed by demons, that kept him from finding some nice sand to stick his head under.

The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright vanished suddenly with barely enough time to open the door of his hotel room and start for the bed. Sweet bed with clean enough sheets and a minimum amount of lumps. He wanted sleep without nightmares. It wasn't likely to happen but a man could dream.

His duffle bag was lying on its side at the foot of his bed when he could have sworn that he left it leaning against the wall and the afternoon's events made him reach for his pocket where he would normally be carrying a stake. No such luck and a faint creak behind him was all the warning he had before the back of his skull exploded with painful stars. There was time enough to wonder why the floor was getting closer before the room was sucked down a giant drain.

* * *

Xander became aware of heat first. Then the painful bumping as he sloshed back and forth in the bed of the truck. He could taste motor oil on his tongue, spitting sand and dust as he blinked his eye. Reaching for the back of his head came with the discovery of duct tape around his wrists. There was more around his ankles and it took a series of awkward wiggles and twists to get him into a sitting position. 

One look through the tinted windows of the cab made him grateful to be inside. Stretching out on all sides was an ocean of cinnamon colored sand dunes and islands of rock like the humps and spikes of gargantuan sea creatures. The road he was traveling had been paved at some point but the cracks and potholes were nearing critical mass and the desert sands would soon snap their jaws down over the worn pavement. His only gauge of time was the stiffness of his joints and muscles from lying on his side, and if they were any indication, he was miles away from Tripoli.

Inside the truck was slightly less desolate. He found a battered canteen half filled with brackish water, a handful of bruised oranges that had seen better days, and some dried out chunks of date bread. The oranges eased the growling in his stomach and the water soothed his cracked tongue even if it did nothing to help get the taste of sand out of his mouth. It was some mercy that his kidnappers had thought to bring along his duffle bag; its contents having been thoroughly searched but otherwise intact. There was hardly anything there anyone else would want. A can of spray on deodorant and the same scent in stick form, a guide book for Libya, sunscreen, sunglasses, a hat, an empty water bottle, his notebook for taking notes when he remembered, and a handful of clothes that would do if he wasn't picky about cleanliness. Strange that his kidnapper hadn't taken his money and watch, which didn't bode well for why he'd been knocked over the head and dumped in a truck bed.

He pulled the duffle around behind him to ease some of the pain in his back and got to work chewing at the duct tape around his wrists. Maybe he was alive because they'd found what they were looking for and maybe he was alive because they hadn't. One thing he did know was that the desert outside, not the duct tape, was the real prison.

He passed the day watching the shadows shift through the back of the truck, unsure if it was due to the sun's arc or the truck changing directions. It stopped once and he saw a veiled figure in robes and a headdress climb out to add gas to the tank before continuing on. There was no window to the cab of the truck, no way to see or communicate with the phantom driver.

Sunset turned the desert ocean into a spray of purples and pinks that would have been beautiful on another day, in nicer surroundings, and possibly when he wasn't being kidnapped in a foreign country. A man could disappear out in this land with no one the wiser and no idea where to look even if they were; just sand and dust were all anyone would ever find of him if he was dumped out in the middle of it. He peeled another orange and ate the pieces one by one, savoring the sticky juice with more relish than usual.

Even with the sun dipping below the horizon the heat was still oppressive, sweat and salt coating most of his skin and saturating his clothing. When the truck came to a halt again he was surprised to see the man come around to the back and drop open the tailgate, motioning for Xander to come out.

"Nice day for a drive through the Sahara, isn't it?" Xander asked as he climbed out, taking note of the gun in the man's hand and smiling as cheerfully as he could manage.

The gun flicked toward the desert and the man spoke. "Five minutes."

"To do what exactly? Enjoy the non existent breeze?" Xander wandered to the edge of the road, grateful to be stretching his legs despite the heat and sand. Bending forward to ease the ache in his back, he recognized another reason to be glad to be out and about. He could hear the man doing something in the back of the truck and wasn't surprised to see that he wasn't being watched. There was no point in watching if there was nowhere to run. Muttering about the lack of bathrooms in African countries, he was as discreet as possible in heeding the call of nature.

Standing in the silence of evening, he saw the first subtle hints of life. The retreating sun gave way to the critters that came out at night. It took him a moment to realize that the funny rock that looked like it had legs was actually a scorpion and before he could react, it had scuttled out of a hole in the sand and hurried away. He wondered how many things lurked beneath the sand just waiting for nightfall.

When he zipped up and turned back to the truck, he was back to staring into the barrel of a gun. "Maybe we didn't get off on the right foot. I'm really a nice guy once you get to know me."

There was no response and he climbed back into the bed of the truck without needing further encouragement of the bullet variety; watching as the tailgate and window slammed shut once again. He found that the canteen had been refilled and his dwindling stock of oranges and date bread replenished. His captor must want him alive if he was feeding him, but alive for what? There wasn't much to look forward to if he was only being kept alive to be tortured for information. Especially since he doubted there was any valuable information he could give anyone. He couldn't tell them where all the Slayers were as he didn't have the slightest idea where the one he was supposed to be collecting was, let alone the rest of them. If they wanted to know how to kill a vampire, well, he'd tell them that torture free.

He watched the shadows on the sand dunes darken, turning everything into an inked comic book world of contrasts. The air cooled without the sun beating down and soon he was curled up against his duffle bag with clothes draped over him for warmth. Despite the uncomfortable accommodations, the hum of the engine was a strange mechanical lullaby that eventually slowed the thoughts in his head enough that his eye closed and he slept.

Passage of time was marked by truck stops and by the growing collection of orange peels and date pits. The view outside the back of the truck changed from towering mountains of sand to rocky boulders littering unforgiving ground and back again to sand. He remembered seeing what had looked like lily pads on a pond, green circles swept out over the blinding sand that meant there was water beneath the desert. They stopped there and he rubbed futilely at the windows of the truck, trying to clear away enough of the dust to get a better look.

Heat made him lethargic and lack of humidity gave him nosebleeds at random intervals throughout the day. Despite the flask that was refilled every day, he was pretty sure that he wasn't getting enough water to counteract the desert and wondered if anyone who lived there ever managed to get enough water.

Even the sunshine was different. In sunny California, it was a happy smiling sunshine that meant surfing and beach volleyball. It was playful and friendly, kissing skin and hair with the familiar touch of a lover. This sun was a bear roaring fearsomely down on the world with claws made for stripping skin. The ground beneath was trapped in the vengeful gaze that boiled the life away. There was no volleyball here although the mental image of polo played on the backs of camels amused him for a while.

He began to appreciate the silence. His own voice seemed to have gone into hibernation, sensing that it would be both useless and unheeded. The desert swallowed up words as quickly as water.

The truck lurched at the same moment that he heard the echo of a rifle shot. Jarred by the rough road beneath them, he pressed against the bed of the truck and clutched his bag. There were more gunshots and the old Toyota engine roared forward with increasing speed. Just as he thought his teeth were going to be rattled out of his skull, the vibrations suddenly stopped. He began sliding as the bed tipped to the left and twisted around just in time to hold his bag between him and the roof of the truck bed.

Fiberglass crunched and splintered around his ears. He buried his face against the heavy canvas and fervently wished he was back in soggy old England. The breath was knocked out of him as the truck started another roll and he slammed into the bed only to start sliding again. Somewhere in the chaos, he wondered if clothes in the dryer got seasick from the spinning. He couldn't be sure if it was his stomach or his head spinning.

The truck cap didn't survive the roll and light hit his eyes with the crack of a baseball bat. There was sand in his mouth and nose, he could taste blood and hear gunfire. Years of chasing vampires nearly blind in the darkness had him scrambling toward the nearest hazy cover. A misshapen boulder barely large enough to hide behind was enough for a moment. Long enough to spit sand and blood and cover his head as the truck was enveloped in a roaring ball of gasoline-fueled fire. The stench of burning skin reached him but all he could think was that the fire was the same temperature as the desert air.

Shouting voices carried over the crackling fire. He slunk down lower against the boulder knowing that they'd probably already seen him and he was a goner. What a way to go, shot to death in the Sahara. He'd always figured he end up with teeth in his neck or possibly crushed under some random Hell God's fashionable footwear. There were fantasies of being an integral part of a grand battle although most of those had faded after losing his eye.

He braced himself for the bullets when they found him. Men in dark green uniforms with assault rifles that looked old but well cared for. They were shouting in a language he didn't understand.

"I was kidnapped!" he protested, holding up his hands.

That spurred another round of shouting between them and one of them called out to someone else toward the wreckage of the Toyota. He kept his eye on the triggers of the guns; cautiously optimistic that being still alive was a good sign. They were joined by an older man with lighter skin under the military desert camouflage and blue eyes looking out from under a turban. It was a slightly disturbing blend of cultural implications.

"American, huh?" The man said with a distinctively Texan accent. "Welcome to Chad, son."


	2. Chad

**Chad**

There was no duct tape this time and Xander was grateful for that. He had no illusions that he was any less a prisoner but the uniformed Texan didn't seem to feel compelled to put a bullet through his skull and he didn't intend to make waves that might change his mind. It was a newer Toyota and this time Xander got to ride up in front with seatbelts, something his bruised body was thankful for.

"Lot of open border here," the man who identified himself only as Jasper, Marine Corps, shouted over the noise of the engine. "All sorts come in and out of Chad real easy like. Not every day we catch 'em." He cackled at that last part and gave Xander a wicked grin.

"I'm a tourist." Xander yelled back. "I was kidnapped in Tripoli."

"It happens." He didn't seem surprised by that, jerking the wheel to take a hard left. "Goddamn sun ain't the only villain in this fucking place. Lucky you didn't get your throat slit. Can't throw you back over the border without pissing Libya off, best plan is to get to the U.S. Embassy in N'Djamena and go from there."

"Is that where we're going?" Xander was trying to think of a good excuse to give the Libyan government for why he'd left the tour and the country.

"Nah, next stop is my patrol outpost. Ain't much but it'll get us on our way. See those mountains?" He pointed to a string of hazy peaks nearly obscured by dust and the shimmering heat off the desert. "Use to be active volcanoes, beyond that ain't nothing but dust thick as soup. Look close and you'll find burned out tanks, dud missiles; some of 'em left over from the second World War. Then there's all the fucking landmines. Few years back, Libya made a grab for the strip of land we just came through and this area's still full of rebel fighters. Beats me why they give a shit who owns this piece of hell."

"Sounds like a great vacation spot."

Jasper laughed at that, harsh and gritty with too much exposure to heat and sand. "Long as you don't bring the kiddies. This end of Chad ain't particularly friendly. Got rebels from three countries plus the homegrown kind, all up here just looking for something to use as target practice. What about you? Why come to Libya?"

"Roman ruins. I was on a tour," he lied without batting an eye.

"That's some fucked country, ain't it? Outlawin' liquor. Who's brilliant idea was that?" Jasper shook his head with amusement.

"Those crazy Muslims." Xander managed not to roll his eye sarcastically. Disagreeing with the nice man holding the gun was never a good idea.

"Ain't got nothing against them but not everybody walks the same line, you know. Taking away people's choice, turning them into clones of something, that don't ever work in the long run. Can't control people forever."

Xander wasn't sure he had anything to say to that so he changed the subject. "How many kidnap victims have you seen?"

"Still alive? Not many. Had one a few days back, just a little thing. Gutsy though. Stopped the Jeep and she made a break for it, fast as a jackrabbit. Reminded me of my niece back home." He shook his head tiredly. "Probably planning to sell her off once they got here."

"Do you still know where she is?" He barely dared hope that coincidence might be on his side.

"Back at the outpost until my run is up and I head south. There's a consulate in Faya-Largeau. Arrange to send her back if they can contact her family. Might be they're the ones arranged the kidnapping in the first place. Fucking crazy what some people will do, you know." He squinted at the horizon ahead of them and gunned the engine. "Looks like we got ourselves a dust storm. If we can't beat it, we'll have to sit tight until it blows out. Those things are hell on the engine. Some of the bastards are big enough you can see 'em from space."

Xander held on tighter to the passenger door handle and tried not to panic at the wall of sand building to the southwest. The air outside was getting hazier, filling with a fine white dust that seeped through every crack and began to coat the inside of the truck.

"Dustiest place on earth south of those. You ask me, dust is dust but they've been sending a bunch of National Geographic types to study it. Bunch of geeks with cameras and test tubes." He fished through one of his jacket pockets and produced a crumpled plastic bag with some kind of food wrapped inside. "Camel jerky?"

"No, thanks." Xander grimaced and was treated to another of Jasper's cackles.

"Ain't half bad. Nothing like the steak back home. Man, I'll be glad to have a t-bone again."

"How long have you been here?"

"I'm a long-termer," he shouted as they took another hair-raising turn and tore down a hill toward the rocky plain and the ominous dust cloud. "Counter terrorism training runs through summer but some of us have to stay to keep the ball rolling. Been on border patrol for six months now."

"Counter terrorism?" Xander was less surprised than he thought he should have been.

"That's what the paperwork said. Lately we've been training the Presidential guard. Had one attempt at a coup last year and it's about time for another one. Hate those fucking things, man. Blood and bullets and no one in this goddamn country knows how to shoot worth shit." Jasper shuddered with horror and disgust. "Now we got 'em running drills, shooting AK's. Kids like to collect the shell casings, make little necklaces out of 'em and stuff."

"Which side are we on? In the coups, I mean."

"Guy in power ain't much but he's better than whatever asshole would take his place. Mostly we're just trying to keep a lid on it." He gave Xander a sideways look. "I always forget you guys stateside probably don't know shit about this."

"I'm bad with the news. Since Rather retired and Jennings took the job as news anchor in the sky, it's just no fun anymore."

"Right," Jaspar chuckled. "It breaks down like this. The country's split down the center like California. North and south don't exactly agree on what's good. North has desert but the south gets rain enough to have a lake and rainforest. 'Sides that, Exxon runs a big pipeline out of southern Chad and oil money's good for everyone if they don't tear the place apart."

"So they're fighting over oil?"

"Ain't just that. Muslims in the north, Christians in the south. And those two ain't never gonna stop killing each other. Southern border's got tribal warfare spillin' out all over." He squinted at the wall of dust and grinned. "Looks like we're just gonna make it. Hold on."

Their destination was a rather odd looking set of what must have been buildings. To Xander they looked like gray-blue beehives squatting amidst the brown rock and sad little scrub bushes barely managing to hold onto to life. They nearly spun to a halt, throwing gravel and sand as the tires dug in for traction. It came to mind that his rather odd guide might have rodeo somewhere in his past and not just because he had the sneaking suspicion that all the sand had gone to Jasper's brain.

"Home shit home." Jasper grinned as he hopped out of the truck.

The wind had picked up and Xander choked on the dust in the air, blinking futilely to keep it out of his eyes as he followed the Marine through a narrow opening in one of the beehives and down a set of stairs carved out of the earth. Beneath the surface was a hollowed out room of surprising size and doorways leading into dark passageways.

"Whoa." Xander looked around the weapons adorning the walls and boxes of ammunition piled haphazardly.

"When in Rome." Jasper motioned for him to follow down one of the corridors. "There's a whole goddamn city built underground in Libya. Heard about it from some of the guys. Berbers do it too. Keeps them out of the sun and the dust. Winter's a bitch too, gets fucking cold out there."

Fumbling through the pitch black wasn't unusual for Xander but he was glad to come out into another chamber that seemed to be the kitchen area. There was a rickety card table and some empty ammunition crates for chairs. Food seemed to consist of canned and processed goods, anything that wouldn't rot or go bad in the miles of nothing that surrounded them. He accepted a canteen of water gratefully, realizing how thirsty he'd gotten.

"The desert always wins." Jasper cut open a can of baked beans and dumped them into a battered pot over a kerosene burner. "It's like Everest. You're dying just as soon as you set foot on the goddamn mountain. May take years but this place'll kill you sure as shooting."

"That's a happy thought."

"Gotta be something, right? Ain't none of us lives forever."

Xander glanced around, hoping to find an innocent little Libyan girl who could snap him like a toothpick. "I'm partial to the quietly in my sleep route."

"Long as I've still got my boots on." He dumped the heated beans unceremoniously into three misfit bowls and handed two of them to Xander. "Maybe you can convince the kid to eat something, she don't seem to like me much and I don't speak Arabic. Chad's got more languages than the US has states so I got my hands full just tryin' to say hello in those. There ain't no pork in this shit so should be fine for her. Can't never remember what all they don't eat. Through there."

That explained the chatting on the drive. This might have been the first time in weeks Jasper had a captive audience who spoke English as a first language. Xander took the bowls and started down the dark corridor with hesitant footsteps. The next chamber room was darker than the last two, lit only by a single lamp run on batteries. Rolled up blankets and sleeping mats were stacked against the far side, providing minimum protection against the rough floor.

It was a relief to see the girl huddled against the wall; her head cloth and tunic stained the color of the dust outside. He kept a safe distance as he set down the bowl of beans and sat down to eat his own. His stomach growled but he figured it was probably just happy for something other than oranges and date bread. Vaguely, he wondered when he'd gotten used to eating without the luxury of utensils but figured it didn't matter.

"Salaam aleikum," he said after swallowing down a mouthful. She didn't answer, turning her head away from him. "Maa ismuk?" He was trying to formulate the question of whether or not she had been kidnapped in Arabic when she slowly reached for the bowl.

"I speak English," she told him quietly.

"Good, because my Arabic? Pretty scary." He gave her his most comforting smile. "I'm Xander."

"Muna," she said, her face nearly buried in the bowl as she ate.

"Pleased to meet you, Muna. The nice man with the gun tells me you were kidnapped. I bet your family is worried about you." He waited patiently as she ignored him. The girl couldn't have been older than fourteen and her wide eyes reminded him of Dawn Summers. "Muna? Are you all right?"

"They are glad to be rid of me." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the bowl down, curling tighter into a ball.

"Do you have a brother named Hassan?"

Her eyes got a little wider and he thought he saw something close to fear in them. "You know Hassan?"

Xander swallowed hard as he remembered what he would have to tell her. He'd been half hoping this was a different kidnapped little girl. "He asked me to look for you."

"I cannot go back. I dishonor my family and Allah." Tears brimmed her eyes and the raw misery in her voice made him ache.

"No, you don't. You're different. I know you're different, that's why I'm here. You're special, you're chosen."

"I am evil," she sniffed despondently.

"Trust me. I've seen enough evil to know what it looks like and it's not nearly as cute as you are." He moved the slightest bit closer to her. "You've been having nightmares about people you know but you've never met, about things that can't be real. Monsters that come out at night."

"Yes," she answered warily.

"You're not alone. There are others like you. That's why I was sent to find you, so you can be with girls just like you. You're not evil, Muna."

"It is not against Allah?"

"I think he'll make an exception for you. There's the whole greater good thing and gods tend to go for that, most of them anyway." He debated putting off the worst of the bad news, wondering if the band-aid method was really the best in this situation. If he didn't tell her now, he risked her believing later that he had lied to her. A win-win scenario wasn't coming to mind so he decided on cautious honesty. Taking the lie in the past had only left him on the wrong end of a Slayer's temper.

Tears left streaks of dust on her face as she wiped them away. "Did you really speak with Hassan?"

He tried not to wince, setting his bowl on the ground and focusing on her. "Yes. I'm sorry, Muna. Your brother and your father were killed a few days ago." He watched her face go through an array of emotions from disbelief to rage and finally to sadness.

"It is because of me," she whispered, her lower lip trembling.

"No, no! It's not your fault, don't ever think that." He sat there awkwardly not knowing a way to comfort a sobbing teenage girl from a culture he didn't understand. It wrenched at his heart to be there and unable to do anything at all. If he'd never come to Libya, her brother and father might still be alive and she might be in the back of someone else's truck on her way to who knows where.

He waited until she cried herself to sleep before he finished what was left of his meal, laid a blanket gently over her, and gathered the bowls to return to the kitchen room. These were the times he wished for Giles or Willow. Even Buffy would be handy when it came time to breaking the bad news. Someone who didn't fumble with words as much as he did and didn't come up feeling inadequate in the face of tears. He couldn't even tell her that everything was going to be fine because he knew better and lies wouldn't keep her alive. It was a pity he couldn't just slip her into an envelope and mail her back to Giles.

There was no sign of their host but he figured Jasper had better things to do than wait on them hand and foot. He set the bowls on the table for lack of knowing what else to do with them. The truth was that he was about dead on his feet anyway and even the stone floor was looking good. He grabbed the duffle he'd abandoned in the kitchen and headed back to the sleeping chamber.

Compared to the bed of a pickup, a sleeping mat was nearly heavenly bliss and his duffle served as a lumpy pillow. Muna was still huddled up beneath the ancient wool blanket, shivering against cold reality rather than the temperature of the room. He wiggled until he found the right combination of grooves in the floor and settled in to attempt sleep. With the bone deep weariness and the darkening bruises from the rollover, he doubted he'd be able to do more than stare at her and think of ways to get her back to Giles, thereby dashing what was left of her hopes for a normal life.

Xander hated that part of the job.

It was surprising how comforting it felt to be underground, safe in the solidity of the earth around them. Dust storms and war came and went but the earth stayed. He drifted to sleep listening to the wind howl as the dust storm raged over them, lost in darkness without the small lamp; his dreams full of shadows and faces he never quite saw chasing after him. Somewhere in the dark, he heard a voice calling his name and vaguely remembered that he wasn't alone.

"Harris!" It was a man's voice, accented and rough.

Dragging out of sleep, he squinted when the beam of a flashlight hit his eye. "Wha? What's going on?"

"Looks like rebels stirred up by the dust storm headed our way. Best get going and stay ahead of them, never know what they're in the mood for. You got the girl?" The flashlight revealed a terrified Muna cowering away from the Marine.

"I'm on it. We'll be out in a second." He fumbled for the lamp and began rolling up his mat. "Can you trust me, Muna? Enough to come with me? You'll be safe with me, I won't let anything happen to you."

She waited for the sound of Jasper's boots to fade away before carefully folding her blanket and setting it aside. "Where else am I to go? I have no home now."

"I know it feels like you've lost everything, like your whole world was ripped away in one morning. But you won't have to do this alone. I have cool friends in odd places and most of them are even human." Seeing the look of fear return, he laughed nervously and picked up his duffle bag. "We'll get to the human versus not human part later. I have a speech. I like to think of it as motivational really."

"You are strange, Xander." There was the barest hint of humor in her dark eyes.

"It has been said. You ready?" He waited for her to adjust her headscarf before leading the way through the dark corridors.

The outer room had been stripped of everything but the battered furniture and from the coating of dust on Jasper, he must have spent the time while Xander slept hauling it out of the underground post. A tarp was stretched over the bed of the Marine's truck as flimsy protection from the desert. He didn't seem to know what to do with Muna there, far more used to fully-grown and heavily armed men than teenage girls. With the duffle stowed away, they piled into the cab with Muna, eyes wide and suspicious of the Marine, nestled between them.

Jasper seemed less inclined to talk this time and slid a beat up Johnny Cash CD into the player to fill the silence. It gave Xander a welcome break from trying to make idle conversation and freed up his brain to think about what he was going to do. The paperwork alone would be enough to give him a migraine. He had to get to the US Embassy in a country he didn't have a visa for with a girl who'd been kidnapped from Libya. None of that was going to look good to Chadian authorities regardless of how he explained it. There was always the option of letting them send her back to Libya and following her but somehow he doubted the people behind her kidnapping had given up.

Somewhere between desert and scrub brush, she felt asleep against Xander with one hand holding onto his arm even in her sleep. There was dust on her face, turning her dark lashes to a lighter hue of brown. He wondered what would happen to her once he got her back to the others. Would she take up painting her nails and gossiping about boys? Maybe she'd be one of the serious Slayer types who talked shop and ambush tactics at their enormous sleepover parties. Part of him hoped he'd be there the first time she killed a vampire and really understood what it meant. Part of him hoped she'd never have to.

That was the trick, the one rule of the game. Go get the girl and bring her back but don't start to care and don't get attached. Even with the Slayer Club to make sure all the girls had someone at their back, it was still a cutthroat business. They all had expiration dates and the vampires weren't going anywhere. There had been talk, idle dreams, of ridding the world of evil, but who were they kidding? Apparently Evil didn't have anywhere else to go.

He brushed a strand of hair that had fallen away from her headscarf out of her face, patting her hand lightly in an inadequate gesture of comfort. It was one thing that he certainly hadn't learned from his parents or non-existent siblings. How to tell a child that monsters were real and it was all okay in the same hypocritical breath. The larger message was that there was light in every darkness and hope in every pothole.

Buffy, good old stoic Buffy, encouraged them to befriend and form bonds with the girls. Get to know them, give them something to fight for. He listened to it with half an ear, believing that she believed it but pulling away at the same time. A friend, a family, an eye, not to mention at least one high school he'd spent a good number of hours rebuilding from nothing. How much more was he expected to lose? If staying at arm's length didn't make the pain less then he figured nothing would short of a stake to his heart. That was the road best left un-traveled; one always ended up soliloquizing to the skulls of dead friends if those thoughts took root.

"There'll be a convoy headed south to pick up supplies." Jasper kept his eyes on the road, looking and obviously expecting some trouble. "Main base is out of Loumia, it's south of N'Djamena so they can drop you at the embassy. Paperwork's gonna be a bitch but they know where to find me and they'll be getting my report."

"Thanks. For everything." He didn't expect a response so he wasn't surprised at the somewhat awkward silence. It was understood that being in a foreign country surrounded by languages you didn't speak made a face from home a welcome relief. There were trips when Xander had been so glad to see an American that he could have hugged the poor person. They were united by the love of McDonalds, Starbucks, and Gap jeans. There were those stars and stripes as well but even where the flag didn't fly there was usually a place to find a Big Mac.

Soon the Marine from Texas who was homesick enough to treat a kidnap victim like a guest would be just another ghost from his past. Africa had a way with ghosts. It took away everything it gave, burned it away under the roaring sun and left nothing behind but memories and footprints.

* * *

Xander wasn't exactly heartbroken that the convoy didn't leave until the next morning. It gave him time to formulate a plan for taking Muna with him and he had no desire to die on a poor excuse for a road in the middle of Chad. The accommodations left a great deal to be desired but it was a free ride to a place that might get him back on track and that made being sandwiched in another truck bed with empty crates and pallets worth the discomfort. 

It had worked out well for him to sneak Muna into one of the crates with a blanket and he had the whole trip to think of a way to get her out. She'd given him a look that meant she thought he had scrambled eggs for brains but climbed in and curled up in the corner. He figured that it worked out well this way. She had no desire to return to Libya where her family thought she was unnatural and evil, and he wasn't about to let her slip away from him until she was safely with the others.

He wasn't used to how small and timid she was, like a frightened bird he was trying to coax out of the nest. This was no badass Buffy or powder keg Faith; there had been no sign that she even had Slayer powers. If the Coven was wrong about this one then Giles owed him a week at a spa getting massages and mud wraps that didn't include complimentary flesh-eating parasites.

The aching in his muscles as the miles passed gave him the appreciation of what it meant to travel a country twice the size of Texas. Just looking at a map didn't convey the magnitude of endless landscape. He watched the desert and sand gradually fade into brown with patches of date palms and ugly little thorn bushes. It was a dusty, dirty green at first. The green of things eking out of living from next to nothing and barely finding enough water to drink. A darker green infused the landscape as they continued to move south and new species of trees began to appear. This was the Africa they sold in brochures for safaris and wildlife trips, with dense grass and oddly shaped trees.

Increasing traffic was the first sign that they were getting close to their destination. Traffic was a loose definition of the chaos on the roads. Beat up station wagons piled high with suitcases and crates of chickens zoomed like racecars around the larger military truck. It also meant more annoying insects buzzing in his ears and dive-bombing his head in crazy zigzags. N'Djamena itself was the closest he'd seen to a sprawling, smog-ridden metropolis since Tripoli and he was surprised what a relief the sound of civilization was after too much time in the silence of the Sahara.

The soldiers in the front of the truck spared him the hassle of devising a clever plan by pulling over and banging on the side of the door. He dropped the side of the crate open and helped Muna out of her hiding spot, easing her over the back of the truck bed and onto the pavement. Metal echoed as he struck the tailgate to let them know he was out and then they were gone.

He watched Muna self-consciously adjust her headscarf and patted her shoulder a little awkwardly. "How about some food? There's bound to be a market around here somewhere." She only nodded in response, watching the bustling city around her with wide eyes.

There was a large open-air market nearby full of rickety little booths selling anything under the sun. Paved ground radiated the sun's heat back up again, turning the walkways into one continuous oven. There were girls dressed in rainbow robes carrying wide bowls of nuts and biscuits on their heads. Everyone, it seemed, was dressed like some sort of brightly colored tropical bird. He bartered for dates and seasoned bread, picking up a few cans of European canned peas or petit pois as the vendors called them. His spirits soared considerably when he found a young boy selling bottles of Coca-Cola. Muna didn't seem convinced that it was worth drinking and stuffed her mouth with dates and nuts instead.

"So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" he asked as they settled under the scant shade of a wizened tree to eat their bread.

"You are making a joke?" Muna looked up at him with date juice on her chin.

"Yes, I am making a joke. And we might be stuck with each other for a while so I should warn you that I make a lot of jokes. Some good and some not so good."

She hesitated and glanced around as though waiting for the secret police to arrest her. "My father does not believe that women should make jokes."

"Why not?"

"He says it is not our place."

"What is your place?" He sipped the warm Coke with relish.

"To be a good wife and a mother some day. Take care of the home, feed my family. That is a woman's place," she told him seriously.

"Then you're in for shock. You're different and your life is going to be different from now on. Do you understand?" He didn't expect an answer. The girls who had never heard of Slayers or vampires always took a few hours or even days to come to terms with the idea that they were different. There really was never an easy way to explain a world gone mad.

"You say there are others like me?" Muna asked.

"Just like you. I'm part of a group that travels around the world to find them and help them."

"The man," she paused again to consider her words. "The man who took me from my home. He said others would come and they would try to hurt me. He said I mustn't trust any of them."

"There are bad people looking for you too, Muna. I can help you if you can trust me. Do you think you can trust me?"

"You are nicer than the other man," she said matter-of-factly as she finished off the dates. "Where are we going now?"

"We are going to the American Embassy and we're going to ask for a phone. Then we're probably gonna sit in some stuffy chairs for awhile, fill out a bunch of papers, and eventually we'll go to England." He had no idea how he was supposed to get a Libyan girl with no passport out of Africa and into England but that was for Giles's big brain to figure out. And if there wasn't a neatly red-taped solution, not all of Xander's mission exits had involved sitting in a comfy seat and smiling for customs.

"What is America like?" she asked suddenly, her dark eyes wide and inquisitive.

"It's big. There are a lot of roads and people. And there's a Walmart for everyone."

"Walmart? I have heard of this. What is it like?"

"Like a marketplace where you can get anything you want. Food, clothes, bicycles, DVDs. Even new tires for your car." He laughed when her eyes got wide enough that he thought they might pop out of her head. "Don't you have markets like that?"

She shook her head quickly. "My mother stands in a line for bread and eggs. There are some markets that have vegetables now. Mother says it's better than it was when I was a baby. Xander…will I ever see my family again?"

"Of course you will. Once we've convinced you that you're not evil and taught you how to use a stake, you'll be homeward bound just like the movie."

"Good." She smiled hopefully up at him. "I will show them I am not evil."

"That's the spirit." Tousling her headscarf didn't have quite the same effect as hair but she giggled and swatted his hand away, rearranging the lightweight fabric carefully. He hoped that once she'd seen the truth about who she was, she wouldn't lose the sparkle in her eyes or that laugh. There was laughter among the Slayers now but the dark times were all too fresh in his memory.

Once the food was gone, they found their way back through the hellishly hot marketplace to the American Embassy. It took some convincing and name-dropping for the guard to let Muna follow him into the building. They would have to contact Jasper to verify that she was a kidnap victim and even then, Xander would have to answer to why he hadn't left her with the Libyan Consulate in Faya-Largeau. He pushed the protective older brother angle on that one and vehemently argued that he was only trying to ensure that the girl was safely returned to her family.

In the end, he had the impression that the Embassy was even more interested in keeping it quiet than he was. This would be just another state secret that never made the light of day or the evening news, completely taken care of behind closed doors. A final agreement was due mostly to a calming voice from England assuring them that Xander wasn't trying to start an international incident, he was just profoundly stupid.

They were pointed to a small room with a prayer mat and a sofa with lumpy cushions. It would be their home until many more phone calls were sacrificed and the gods of paperwork finally smiled.

Hours ticked by, the waiting room was traded for a back office that wasn't being used and a carpeted divider between two ancient army cots. The harried Embassy official couldn't give them an estimated time of departure so they made the best of being stuck with each other. He claimed a prayer mat for Muna and pointed her toward Mecca as best he could with the decorative compass hanging on the Embassy wall and his shaky knowledge of geography. North and to the right, he marked a spot on the far wall with a little smiley face and remembered to stay quiet while she was praying. She tried to teach him a prayer but couldn't stop giggling at his fumbling Arabic.

At night, when the city was quieter and only the security night shift patrolled the building, he told her about Sunnydale, demons, and the Slayers. She took it all in, eyes wide and serious as she listened to every word and every story. The bottom of the spray-on deodorant can twisted off and he gave her the small stake stored inside to practice with. Like all the others, she had an inherent gift for wielding a weapon and she took to fighting like a fish to water. There was still hesitation and she was far too timid to last long once the real patrolling started, but time was on his side. Since arriving in Chad, he had seen no sign of vampires or demons despite the fact that countries with body counts due to civil unrest usually served as breeding grounds for all sorts of nasties. He hoped his luck would hold until the paperwork got sorted.

He was their first glimpse into the world, their first Watcher in a way, and it was an experience he was still honing. _Don't be a Wesley._ That was what Faith always shouted at his back when he left for another girl. At first he'd assumed she was telling him not to be useless but after the first few retrieval ops, he decided that she was really telling him not to forget that they were still teenage girls. Teenage girls who'd woken up one morning as aliens among their own family, their heads filled with nightmares about to knock on their doors.

Some nights he knew she cried her self to sleep, quietly enough that he might not have noticed if he hadn't expected it, and there was no further mention of home or family. Those were wounds a long time healing and there were no patches for that kind of thing.

It took three days before he was allowed to speak to Giles directly instead of sitting idly by and wondering what was going on at the other end of the phone. He could hear the weariness with bureaucracy beneath the static and frequent breaks for nose pinching and glasses cleaning.

"How much longer, Giles? Not that I'm in a hurry to get out of a country that's been tearing itself apart for the last twenty years." He held the phone away from his ear long enough to avoid the inevitable sigh.

"It's not that easy, Xander. You have to understand." There was the sound of nose pinching. "I can't even explain how much trouble you've caused diplomatically. There are four countries involved and none of them are particularly happy that you have absconded with a teenage girl."

"Hey! There's been no absconding. I was kidnapped too. I'm just making sure she gets home safe." He glanced around to see where the Embassy official was. The little man with bits of gray in his black hair always seemed to be listening in with round, bunny-style ears. "If we're going to be here much longer, I don't suppose you could wire me some moulah. Just enough to get some food and a change of clothes for Muna."

"I'll do what I can. Strangely enough, getting you money should be easier than getting you out of the country. There is no British High Commission in Chad but the Commission in Cameroon has ties to the American Embassy, I'll send it through them."

"Thanks, G-man. And send my love to the gang, wish they were here and all that. If I find some postcards, I'll send them your way. Hopefully I'll be back before they arrive but I may be an old man by then." There was small talk after that but Giles was no more inclined to explain the diplomatic complications than Xander was to listen to it. He wished they were speaking in a secret code, saying glamorous and spy-like things rather than exactly what the words meant. Simplicity was a small favor in a complicated world.

Two more days brought a diplomatic pouch with money and ad hoc visas for him and Muna that allowed them to stay in Chad until further arrangements were made. The Embassy official looked more and more harried with each phone call, disappearing into a back office for hours at a time and reappearing only when he needed signatures. It seemed that none of the countries involved could come to an agreement about who was going where and how. The stars and stripes wanted Xander's kidnappers accounted for and were in no hurry to return Muna, who was obviously in danger in her own country. Libya wanted her back and for Xander never to return while England and Chad just wanted them anywhere other than where they were.

Trying to rush the process would get him nothing but an ulcer. Life and government worked a bit differently in Africa. That had been his first lesson bestowed by the continent and he doubted it would be his last. The pace of life could vary from mile to mile, hectic and chaotic going to languid and heavy with no signs or road markers to give a warning. He'd seen iPods, cellphones, and clothes stamped at Old Navy; then there were villages with no running water or electricity, anything that might be considered civilized still years away from those who would benefit. Heat, sun, and insects were the only constants over all twelve million square miles.

"Xander!" Muna emerged from the back room with an excited smile on her face.

"Guess what?"

"I get something new to wear?" She brushed ineffectually at the dirt on her smock.

"And the teenager gets it in one." He held up the pouch with the money. Most of it would be tucked inside the inner pocket of his equally dirty trousers but he gave her enough to pick up new clothes. "Go wild. Get something plaid."

"Plaid?" The look she gave him was classic teen girl.

"Something with color at least. You blend in with the desert any more and I won't be able to find you." The money and Muna were out the door before he could say another word. He slipped the rest into the inner pocket and grabbed his coke bottle before heading after her. A change of clothes wasn't a bad idea for him either since doing laundry consisted of rinsing his shirts and pants in a pail of muddy water.

When he caught up with her, she had a paper basket of figs in one hand and was frowning studiously at her clothing selection. He rolled his eyes at the fabric and she stuck her tongue out in return. Another coke and some nuts and he figured he was good to go for at least twenty minutes of shopping with a teenage girl. Five minutes later and with no more nuts, he was reevaluating that time estimate.

He found a lightweight cotton shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts in a bright blue cousin to paisley to add to his collection of travel couture. In the back of his mind, there was always the sneaking suspicion that the reason Buffy had chosen Europe as her round-up territory had something to do with the proximity of high fashion. A girl had to have her stylish boots for kicking demon ass. Theoretically, once the Slayers had gone through boot camp, they'd head back from whence they came and complete the global network. Some would be welcomed home and some would build homes where they were needed. Girls like Muna would never belong in a culture where women were dogmatically inferior; her worst enemy would be her own people.

It was a sobering thought and it stopped him in his tracks. A few yards ahead of him, she was just a normal teenage girl looking at a pretty green scarf to wrap over her hair. He had to smile as she bartered stubbornly with the vendor until she was happy with the amount. There might be hope for his hummingbird-sized Slayer yet.

The sight of Caucasian skin caught his eye, standing out like a sore thumb amidst the palette of brown to black. He craned his neck to get a better look and recognized two middle-aged subjects of the Queen. It took the space to two heartbeats, which he felt in his chest like drum beats, to think that Livvy Marchant didn't look friendly and to come to the conclusion that they couldn't be in Chad on a lucky coincidence. Nothing happened by accident in this line of work.

He started pushing through the crowd, elbowing his way toward Muna with his eye still trained on the Marchants. Muna waved when she saw that he was headed toward her, calling his name and holding up her new headscarf for him to see. He saw Edward Marchant turn toward the sound of his name and didn't wait to see if he was reaching into his hip pack for a gun with a silencer.

"Xander?" Muna clutched the scarf, realizing that something was wrong the moment he reached her.

"We have to go. Stay close." He circled his arm around her back protectively and started the complex dance of weaving and darting back through the market.

"What is wrong?" She glanced back over her shoulder with a frown.

"Let's just say it's getting a little too crowded for me." Pulling her closer, he tried to be reassuring. They just had to make it back to the Embassy and they would be safe enough. He could venture out later to look for the Marchants and hopefully find out what they were doing in Chad.

A familiar wide-brimmed straw hat appeared several feet ahead of them and he veered right down a narrow passage between the stalls. One behind and one ahead of them, cutting off the direct route to the Embassy. They would be able to outrun them if they could get clear, but they couldn't outrun bullets. He stopped at one of the stalls, looking both ways before he motioned to the pile of woven baskets being sold.

"Hide behind those, stay low and keep quiet. I'll come back for you when they're gone." Once she had crawled behind them, he rearranged several baskets to ensure she couldn't be seen before heading back toward the heart of the market. They probably wouldn't kill him until they'd tortured her location out of him. It wasn't much to look forward to but he figured his odds weren't too dismal against two middle-aged Brits, even if they did have guns.

He bought a handful of dates and found a place to wait. A few minutes later they converged about fifty feet away from him, their gestures agitated as they spoke. Leisurely chewing on one of his dates, he strolled toward them and waved cheerfully when they saw him.

"You're a little off the beaten path if you're looking for Roman ruins. What brings you to Chad?" He smiled brightly.

"Xander! We were worried sick about you." Livvy covered quickly.

"I bet you were. So tell me, with one of you is the lousy shot? Cause I counted six bullets that missed me at Leptis Magna. Pretty sloppy." He continued to smile as their expressions turned ominous.

"Where's the girl?" Edward kept his hand in his hip pack.

"Who can keep track of a teenager? I need a locator beacon for that girl, I turn my back and she's off. I'm sure you know how that goes, since you lost her once yourself."

"Our associate lost her," Livvy informed him coldly. "And if you value your life, you'll tell us where she is."

"Just out of curiosity, what're you gonna do with her? You know she's a Slayer. Got some vamps need dusting?" He casually popped another date in his mouth. "Or is this another one of those assassin recruiting deals? Cause I'm really not a fan of those and they never work. Those Slayers can be quite the handful, if you know what I mean."

"I don't know and I don't particularly care. We were hired to collect her and to kill anyone who tried to stop us, so I suggest you cooperate."

Xander noticed that the British accent had vanished from both of their voices. "Who hired you? Wolfram and Hart? More of those robo-ninja guys? Come on, you can tell me. Who's putting up the dough for this little pleasure cruise?"

She glared at him before turning to scan the crowd for any sign of Muna. "You really are the most annoying Watcher I've had to kill."

"Exactly how many have you killed?" he fired back to cover his surprise at being called a Watcher.

"Not enough. You're all alike. The Slayer is Chosen, the Slayer is supposed to fight evil. It's pathetic. Times change and the Council is still a thousand years behind. Best thing that ever happened was most of them getting blown to bits three years ago." Livvy shook her head with disgust.

"You've got a better plan?" He waved her off before she could respond. "Don't bother. I've heard it all and it's always some sick variation of wanting control over the Slayers. I'm not buying and I never will. I was there when the Big Evil swallowed up my hometown, fighting the good fight and getting the most out of my HMO. Which side were you on?"

She bristled visibly. "The side that isn't about to let the Watcher's Council make a mockery of the Slayers for another thousand years. Even with most of them dead, it's still made up of shortsighted, pompous idiots. They have a weapon and they refuse to use it."

Xander took a step closer, ignoring the emerging gun in Edward's hand. "They're human beings, not weapons."

"This is ridiculous. Give us the girl, and we'll let you live," Edward interrupted their stand off irritably and jabbed the barrel of the gun into Xander's side.

"Not happening." He crossed his arms and stared them down defiantly. "I grew up on a Hellmouth with vampires, Hell Gods, and the Preying Mantis Lady so it's going to take more than one little gun to scare me." If there was anything he was supremely good at, it was being stupid and causing international incidents. Getting shot in the middle of a market in Chad sounded right up his alley.

He saw Muna peer around the corner of a stall and couldn't decide if he was furious at her for leaving her hiding spot or proud that she'd shown initiative. If he'd had time to decide, he probably would have come down on the side of pride. She had a good arm and the gourd hurled at Edward's head was a solid hit. Marchant lurched forward and to the side, eyes turning glassy and the gun sliding back into his pack. Xander grabbed onto the older man's shoulders and pushed him into Livvy, using the diversion to dash around them and shove his way to Muna.

Crates of fruit and vegetables clattered to the ground behind them as he and Muna rounded the corner, sprinting through the corridors as fast as they could through the crowd. He held tightly onto her hand, ignoring the angry shouting that followed them. It was not the time for please and thank you or even a simple get out of the way. He wouldn't know what language to shout in anyway.

They were steps away from the edge of the market and the wide street that would lead them down to the front of the American Embassy. He felt the heat and heard the whistle of a bullet as it whizzed past his ear. The Marchants could fire at will now that they weren't surrounded by people.

Muna hesitated. He pulled her along without looking back; just two more buildings and they would be safe. When she continued to resist him, he paused just long enough to hook his arm around her shoulders to encourage her. Almost there. His heart was pounding and there was sweat pouring down his face and down the back of his neck. His palms were slick with it, sliding easily along the fabric of her tunic even as he tried to tighten his grip.

She stumbled against him and he felt another bullet fly by. Scrambling desperately to the side of the road for cover, he pulled her behind a stack of crates and out of harm's way.

"We're almost there, Muna. Don't be afraid, okay?" He reached out to brush away a lock of hair that had escaped her headscarf. The green scarf she had picked out was limp around her neck, her head bowed against his shoulder. "Muna? Muna!" When he pulled his hand around to take her shoulder, there was blood on his forearm and palm. There was no resistance as he pulled her forward, her head lolling against his shoulder. Blood had soaked through her clothes from her shoulder to the small of her back, blossoming out from a single bullet hole between her shoulder blade and spine.

He waited for a pulse beneath his fingers. Something, anything, even if it was faint and slow. There was nothing. His mind imagined her skin cooling under his touch. He pulled her to him as he slumped against the wall of the building, numb and ice cold. There was no ambulance to call, no doctor who could bring her back from where she'd gone. The busy market had barely even noticed their flight, let alone the death of one little girl.

There were footsteps somewhere at the edge of his senses but he didn't feel inclined to care or look up. If it was the Marchants, they'd lost what they'd come for and there was no one to blame but themselves. How long he stayed curled up against the building with Muna in his arms wasn't important.

In the heat and the sun, the flies found her soon enough and that made him furious. He hid her behind the crates, curled up in a ball just like he'd found her in the military outpost, and returned to the market. A bou bous that a toucan would have been proud was his for far more than it was worth but he had no heart for bargaining. It was another quick jaunt back to the Embassy to collect their few belongings and then he returned to the crates. He tucked the green scarf into his pocket, wrapped her tightly in the bou bous, and carried her back through the market to the yard of waiting bush taxis.

He looked back only once, to watch the American flag shiver above the Embassy building. Maybe it was the air shivering with the heat instead of the flag. He paid the driver for two, arranged himself and Muna in the backseat of the battered Peugeot, and waited. Once they were out of the city and into the scrub, he left the taxi behind and carried her away from the road.

The scent of water and marshland was heavy in the air. Vaguely remembering the map, he guessed they were near Lake Chad. He found a quiet place in a small thicket of bushes and laid her down. There was no way to bury her according to her faith. He didn't know her customs, he didn't understand her belief. The next best thing was all he knew how to do and he hoped that would be enough for her.

It took him until nearly dusk to carve out a dent in the earth big enough to lay her body in and he filled in the grave by starlight, collecting rocks to pile on top that would keep the animals at bay. He changed into the clothes he'd bought at the market, miraculously not soaked in her blood, and tossed the bloody clothes far away from the thicket. By dawn his eye was dry and scratchy with dust and too little sleep. He was tired enough to ignore the insects and scratching claws of unseen critters.

What was he going to tell Giles? He didn't know how to explain that he hadn't been able to protect her, that he'd been powerless to stop it. The feeling of utter uselessness had been dormant for nearly three years stirred and breathed once again. He thought he'd left it behind in the crater that was Sunnydale. But now he had a pile of rocks staring him in the face as a reminder of just how useless he was.

He could almost see Buffy's face and hear the heartfelt but ineffectual pep talk about none of it being his fault. Except he'd come to Africa and set the ball rolling. His meeting with her brother and father had gotten them bullets as well. The piece of metal in her body was meant for him. He couldn't even get shot and that didn't take any particular talent at all. In fact, it was hauntingly similar to bullets he had failed to prevent in his equally worthless past.

The sun drove him from the thicket by noon, eye watering in a poor attempt to remove the grit. He ached with every step back to the road and sat down with his duffle as a cushion. His lips had started to crack before he remembered that he had water bottles in his pack.

In the silence and heat, he barely remembered to speak when a bush taxi pulled over; a battered Toyota sedan with suitcases piled five deep and strapped on with baling twine. There was room enough to stuff his bag between two of the suitcases and he slid into the front passenger seat. Landscape went by but he didn't see anything other than green and brown blurs. The back seat emptied and refilled again with new faces, new voices. N'Djamena appeared on the horizon, swooping toward them like a monstrous anthill.

When they arrived, he found he couldn't move or reach for the door handle. Couldn't do anything but stare at the city and wonder what he was supposed to tell them. He'd nearly imploded four countries when he had a live teenager with him; explaining that he'd buried her body in the countryside would cause more than an international incident, it could start a war.

He became aware that the driver of the bush taxi was speaking to him in broken English, asking him where he was going. There was no easy answer to that question. Maybe there was no answer at all.

"North," he finally managed to get out. "I'm going north."


	3. Niger

**Niger**

The bush taxi driver's name was Zainab. He spoke in fractured sentences of English, French, and Hausa, and with a zest for life that was mirrored in his breakneck driving. His smile was marred by missing teeth, giving him the look of a crazed and slightly drunk pirate steering a metallic vessel through the Sahel. They left Lake Chad and all other sources of water for hundreds of miles behind, careening down the dusty roads like a Peugeot bat fresh from hell.

Time wasn't on their side and the border patrol had taken an early night off from their hard job of intimidating people and taking bribes. It didn't faze the irrepressible Zainab or the rest of the passengers; they merely collected their belongings and hiked off the road to make camp. Xander kept his distance and ended up staring into his tiny scrub brush fire until the sky above was an endless blaze of stars. There might have been sleep but he couldn't feel it when the sun began its daily ritual of attempting to murder them all.

He buried his face in his duffle to hide from the sun but the shouting of his fellow passengers made that impractical. When he roused himself enough to peer blearily around, he saw them wandering away in various directions. They followed the road toward Niger or back into Chad, which didn't make any sense if they'd paid their way. A few of the men spent quite a while investigating the taxi but eventually removed their belongings and drifted away with the rest. Their driver seemed oblivious to what was going on around him.

Brushing himself off as he stood, his back cracking in several places when he stretched tired and sore muscles. The world was already beginning to heat up; soon there would be nothing but heat and sand enough to drive a man mad. He'd already guessed the outcome before he rolled the dice and reached out to shake Zainab.

Heart attack, maybe a stroke. He stared at the peaceful expression on the man's face with envy. Quietly in his sleep with no demons and no bullets. The duffle settled back onto the dirt and Xander got to work. In his head, there was a silent commentary on all the dead he'd left behind since arriving in Africa. All he needed were some black robes and a big curvy scythe thing to complete the outfit. If he were smaller, he could hop on the back of the rat and merrily spread plague across the continent. Not that Africa needed any more microscopic baddies.

None of the others had stayed to bury the man; they were only concerned with getting to their destination. Further down the road, further down their lives. Time wasted burying a stranger would expose them to more of the sun's wrath than need be. He noticed that someone had tried to hotwire the vehicle while he was collecting bits of twine from the roof rack. Zainab must have hidden the key. The twine secured a flat, scoop shaped rock to a twisted branch and creating a cross between a spade and a shovel.

He did his best to remember one of the prayers Muna had taught him, figuring any prayer at all was better than nothing, and buried Zainab in the shallow grave. Anything of value inside the car had been stripped by the tiny dots in the distance that had once been passengers.

The car seats were worn and coated with grime but it was partial cover from the sun so he settled in the backseat and stared at nothing in particular. He should have been on his way back to England where there was enough rain to sustain life. Indoor plumbing had been singing its siren song in his ears since he'd left Tripoli but it sounded hollow now. He couldn't go back without an answer, without something he could tell them about Muna.

His focus fell on the gris-gris hanging from the rear view mirror, swaying lightly from a breeze he couldn't feel or vibrations in the earth itself. They were for luck, Zainab had explained, filled with blessed soil and other bits of hoodoo. It wasn't polite to ask about the contents and forbidden to take a look inside. Never use for money, the man had warned him adamantly. Apparently that made the Demon Road mad enough to open up its jaws and swallow a car whole. Ghost stories.

He knew more ghost stories than a man should ever know. It was part curiosity and part suicidal bravado that made him reach for the small leather pouch. Zainab was fertilizing the Sahel and there was no one around for nearly a mile to see him break one more cultural law. The contents of the pouch fell into his palm, lips cracking as he smiled. A rock, a tiny rodent skull, some plain brown dirt that had probably been blessed by a Shaman, and one key to a Peugeot station wagon. He didn't need any more cosmic encouragement to climb behind the wheel and turn the key in the ignition.

Money made the border crossing easy even with papers that weren't his own, not that he believed the men with automatic weapons could even read what was written on them. They scanned for official seals and pretty pictures but paid no attention to the squiggly lines.

Driving across Niger felt like becoming one of those toy mice careening down a track while being sand blasted. The road was a hundred year old tattoo fading away into the brown earth, ragged green bushes, and bright yellow grass, at times completely washed away by sand. It was easy to see how the stories began. Whispers about demons and ghosts haunting the roads, luring unsuspecting drivers unto traps. An old woman, a black dog, a man riding a stallion with fire for eyes, even a furious eighteen wheeler hurtling down the road.

The sides of the roads were spotted with hollowed out wreckages of cars less fortunate and it was no wonder there were stories. No one came to haul them away; they were stripped of useful parts, anything worth a red cent, and left to rust away in the desert. Maybe they didn't rust. Maybe they just sunk into the earth or maybe they stayed there forever.

It was easy to let his mind slip into neutral. Concentrating on roads with no stop signs and no traffic laws took precedence over any philosophical meanderings he might be tempted to take. He saw monster-sized military trucks piled twice as high with fabric cargo bags; human heads wrapped in turbans covering the top like a cluster of mushrooms. Smaller cars flew with the same reckless speed that Zainab had been fond of, the same terrifying darting between cars and potholes. It was the closest to playing a racecar video game that he'd ever gotten.

What would have happened if he'd run out of gas before reaching Zinder didn't occur to him. He barely realized that the gauge was bobbling dangerously toward empty when he drove into the motor park; missing being sideswiped by inches and rear-ended by less than that. It was a maze of cars barely running or tricked out Niger style, with their respective owners bartering fiercely in French or Hausa for coveted spare parts.

He parked, keeping the key with him, and went in search of fuel. The rumbling in his stomach reminded him that he was hungry enough for motor oil to smell good. Food was easy. Most drivers didn't dare get too far away from their cars and the motor park spilled into the marketplace, young girls moving between the two selling their wares in the flat bowls balanced on their heads. He bought hard boiled eggs, a sad looking red pepper, and chunks of seasoned bread. Petrol was forty cents a liter and prized like china white.

The other drivers held handmade signs to advertise their locations, whichever routes they had staked out as their territory. In his driving, he'd seen no railroads and not a single plane. Bush taxis were the only option for transportation across the desolation.

Wide dark eyes stared at him from behind a car. Small hands and a face that seemed stretched too tight over the skull, ribs standing out in relief beneath dark skin. His stomach lurched uncomfortably but the child's mother whisked it away from the light skinned stranger before he could react. This country hadn't been his destination and he knew very little about it. So far it was dusty and the traffic was a nightmare.

With a full tank of gas, he reluctantly took the dirty money pressed into his hands from strangers who had crowded around his car. Most of the motor park regarded him with a level of hostility. He wasn't one of them, the interloper. The ones who piled into his car were those without enough money for any of the other bush taxis and desperate enough to overlook the color of his skin. He didn't speak, didn't participate in idle conversation as he drove, just listened to the cadence of languages around his ears.

Route Nationale One had a colorful history. He listened with half an ear as the passengers regaled him and the others with tales of its creation. A bit of the French was familiar and he could guess at patterns in the Hausa language, but they seemed content to complete whole pieces of their story in English. Whether or not it was for his benefit didn't matter. Perhaps they wanted to scare him.

Colonel Paul Voulet had carved Route One out of the sand with guns and blood before they laid down the tar. The bodies of children had swung from trees and the wells turned toxic from the dead left to rot at their depths. Gone mad from too much sand and too much sun, the rogue commander had taken the idea of making way for an interstate highway to a lethal extreme. Whole villages were slaughtered; worn and battered crosses still barely visible where innocent blood had watered the earth.

He found himself filtering the stories automatically, breaking them down into their parts and searching for the kernel of truth that always lay at the heart of folklore. Vampires were real, that was truth. The rest that had been built up around them filled in the fantasy that kept them safely obscured from the world's eyes. Men dreamt up fantastic elaborations when they were left without rational explanations. Turning into bats, controlling wolves, singing lead for rock and roll bands; those were all the comfy lies that sold movie tickets and bad novels.

No skeletons remained in the trees along Route One but it wasn't hard to imagine bodies hanging like gruesome Christmas ornaments, strung up by a pale-skinned foreigner who probably just wanted to get out of the godawful desert. Madness came easy in a place like this.

Eventually the conversation lapsed into the sound of the wind and the motor. All four windows were frozen in various states of open and he could feel the sand burrowing into him like tiny maggots. There was green around them, or at least the illusion of green, and what passed for fertile land in this hell. Mostly there was nothing but dirt and more of those prickly bushes. Endless road reminded him of the open stretches of Nevada with sagebrush and Hell's Angels. Although he was pretty sure there were no giraffes standing along the side of US interstate fifteen. There were no mountains, nothing to break up the monotony but blackened carcasses and the occasional tree.

Night came, the passengers fell asleep, and he kept driving like a man possessed. Part of him hoped to see one of the notorious demons that would send him off the road to be burnt and stripped like all the other cars. He wondered how many of the wrecks contained dead bodies, how many people had been trapped inside and murdered by the sun above them. Had they too gone mad as they waited for death?

In darkness broken only by headlights, he imagined their souls trailing after him as they recognized his mythical scythe. Death had come to Niger wearing an American's skin and driving a Peugeot. For some reason, that made him smile.

* * *

Xander lost count of the times he made the trip between Zinder and Niamey and beyond. He learned to barter for motor oil, cut with water and full of grit, and shoulder his way through the frenzied crowd for the purest petrol. They still looked at him sideways but there was newfound respect in their scowls. This American wasn't just passing through; this American was driving the same roads and wearing the same gris-gris around his neck.

"Comment ca va, Xander?" A familiar wizened face asked him in the market at Zinder, most of the teeth missing from his grin.

"Ca va bien, Fayid. Il fait chaud comme enfer." Xander gave him a little extra when he paid for the petrol.

"Niger ne se rapelle pas la pluie. Merci, merci…my children will eat tonight."

"Vous n'avez aucun enfants." He winked at the older man. It might have been a tasteless joke but the older man didn't seem offended. Fayid's sons had died before reaching adulthood and now he cared for a ragged little band of orphans. Most of them would die before the year was out; there simply wasn't enough life in the place to sustain them.

He bought bread and sagging vegetables for the road. The memories of produce aisles and crisp lettuce were dim enough to be dreams from some other life. Recollection of ice cream was all but lost forever. There were no mirrors or scales but his clothes only fit with the help of baling twine, hanging from his bones as loosely as those around him. Taking on passengers kept his money at a rough equilibrium, dipping occasionally when his indifference cracked and a pair of wide eyes threatened to revive the Xander of the past.

That Xander was still on a street in Chad with a teenage girl bleeding to death in his arms. Helpless and hopeless and lost. The Xander behind the wheel of the Peugeot was a Reaper of souls, driving Route One to collect those who were lost and drifting across the desert. He'd found the bones of a steer near one of the haunted villages during one of his runs and strapped the skull to the hood of the car as a hollow-eyed ornament.

His passengers were still those too poor to pay for any other taxis but he didn't mind and they kept coming; clutching their gris-gris and whispering their prayers for Allah to protect them from the road. They never connected the burned out wreckages, as common as cattle in Texas, with the maniac drivers behind the wheel. It was the road and the demons in search of human barbeques that were to blame.

If petrol was heroin then water was cocaine. Every waking moment was spent in pursuit of those two things. One to keep him alive and the other to keep him on the road. It was a delicate balance. The guards at the multiple checkpoints along Route One were as likely to drag him from the car and beat him to a pulp as they were to look the other way. Most wanted bribes; which Xander had converted into American dollars for the hell of it and was sickened to realize that keeping his nose unbroken was worth far less than a dollar.

After driving the highways half a dozen times, the guards became used to seeing him and they relaxed enough to lower their weapons when they stopped him. He understood bits of what they said now. Mostly they wondered what the crazy American was doing in spending his time in hell. He didn't think about it much.

This place truly was hell. It was hell in sand and dirt and death. He'd stopped wondering why people clung to the futility of carving out an existence in a place that gave them nothing in return. It redefined hell and gave it new meaning. It was a hell of desolation and endless nothingness.

In the south, there were places where fields of sorghum and millet stretched out for miles. Patches of hell grew the wilted peppers and shriveled dates that he bought at the market places. Some towns raised goats and cattle, as scrawny as the humans but surviving nonetheless on yellow grass and prickly bushes. The people always had one eye to the sky, looking for rain that may or may not come. None of that seemed reason enough to stay in a place that could no longer sustain life the way it had once.

He had stumbled onto the fossils in the market at Niamey and asked questions in broken French. Stones with bits of fish and plants; pieces of what the Sahara had been thousands, maybe millions, of years ago. A place of trees, flowers, and water beyond imagining. Then the Sahara had died and was exacting bitter revenge on every living thing it touched from a dusty grave.

In the north, the Tenere was a picture postcard at dusk when the desert turned purple and crimson, bits of wreckage lighting up with the last gleaming of the sun. It was the stuff of movies and dreams of grand adventure. He stopped wishing for a camera, stopped noticing more than the road ahead. No flowers to smell, nothing to do but keep driving until all the dead of Niger were trailing behind the battered Peugeot. He wasn't sure what to do with them, although in his most lucid moments he recognized the insanity of his wondering. Maybe they would tell stories of him years from now, how he had gone mad under the Saharan sun.

They were disjointed thoughts that seemed normal enough that they made no pause in his eating or wandering. Markets were places to get lost in and that was what he wanted. He'd made the wardrobe switch to the flowing robes everyone around him wore and a turban sloppily wrapped around his head. The knack for that particular skill continued to evade him.

He patted the nose of a camel as he passed by. The heavily lidded eyes merely stared at him; jaw working as it chewed on some unidentifiable grain. Coarse fur was dirty and matted with oil and dust; it didn't seem to mind. Theirs' were simple lives, the camels that walked across the desert with a quiet acceptance borne of adaptation. Beside the camels for sale were little goats bleating and gnawing at their tethers, the seller swatting them with a thin branch when they tried to escape. At the other end of the market, away from livestock and petrol fumes, he could find memories of home in the second hand European goods and bootlegged CDs. So-called civilization was even found in hell. There were women wearing dresses that had come from a department store long ago and far way.

Remembering wasn't something he cared for. What was there to remember? An ex-fiancée cut in half, a hometown turned crater, and another mission to find yet another girl who was just going to die once he found her. Viva the life of Xander Harris, zeppo turned bush taxi driver.

One thing was unusual about that day in the market. There were several men at the edges with automatic weapons, watching the horizon with unusual intensity. Guns weren't uncommon but guarding a marketplace was. He finished off his meager meal, enough to survive but no more than that, and started back toward the Peugeot. Buying food felt like buying three luxury sedans a day, the sticker shock never really wore off. He kept an eye on the nearest armed guard and caught Fayid's attention when he neared the selection of painted pots the man sold along with the petrol.

"Les hommes avec des…assault rifles." He didn't know the French words for assault rifle so he nodded to one of the guards. "Pour quoi?"

Fayid glanced around nervously before he leaned closer to whisper, "Tuaregs. Il sont agites. They come at night, steal our cattle. And a man died last night, his neck torn by an animal." So much for his luck holding. He thanked Fayid and returned to his car.

The history of Zinder, with its decoratively carved mud buildings and beehive huts with millet thatch for a roof, was full of legends and myths about the Tuaregs. Many of the nomads had settled in the city after the French invaded but they had taken the brunt of Niger's civil chaos. Talk of economic distress was hardly useful in a country with no viable economy to begin with and a string of dictators had driven, or slaughtered, the Tuaregs from one end of hell to the other. According to the bits and pieces he'd heard while driving, there was no love lost there.

Camel trains could still be seen passing through the desert with men wrapped in indigo robes, some riding beautiful Arabian horses and others mounted on camels. They had been the scourge of the Sahara at one point, attacking parties along the trade routes and stealing spices, minerals, or people. Times had changed and most had settled. Some were still pirates stealing and murdering their way through the sands with Jeeps and automatic weapons. Ironically, one more thing to add to the list of why they were a different culture was the power of their women. If legend could be believed, it had been that way since Tin Hanan, a woman, united the Tuareg tribes. He was willing to bet money she'd been on the side of super strong and super fast.

A few of his passengers had been tourists lured to the country by the promise of a romantic desert adventure with the Tuaregs, only to find themselves hostages of the very men who had promised to be their guides. Xander took them to Niamey free of charge and dropped them off at the American Embassy without telling them how stupid they were. Most of the time, returning with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and passports in hand, he was pretty sure they'd figured that part out. Then he'd taken to storing a few odd weapons in the Peugeot. A long knife for butchering cattle that was dinged in a couple places, a tire iron that doubled as a club, and the requisite collection of wooden stakes. Wood was an invaluable commodity in a land with few trees.

The life of vampires and Slayers was over and done; he was retired now and had a bush taxi service to run. He wasn't looking for them and he wasn't planning to, but that didn't mean they wouldn't find him and think he'd make a nummy treat. What he didn't understand was why any self-respecting vampire would come to a place where the sun was everyone's enemy and the victims were more like shriveled up human raisins. Their blood probably tasted of dirt and sand. Everything else did.

Anxious to get away from possible inclement supernatural, he left without filling the Peugeot to the bursting point. Most bush taxis were more like cans of tightly packed sardines than real taxis. More fares meant more money and more money meant more food. It was never as real for him as it was for the native drivers. He would always know that he didn't really belong there even after they'd forgotten. But he was content to be there until he figured out where he did belong. After all, Africa was a big place and he had all the time in the world to get lost in it.

He almost kept driving. There was a moment where his foot didn't respond, still pressing the gas pedal to the floor, and he didn't want to stop. Didn't want to get involved. Maybe it was because the girl couldn't have been older than thirteen or maybe it was because the color of her dress was the same green as the scarf knotted loosely around his neck. The passengers in the bush taxi complained loudly and in several languages as he slowed and pulled off of the road.

The girl stared at him, dried blood spilling down over her collarbone from the puncture wounds in her neck. Dark eyes were glassy and she had probably been standing out in the sun far too long. When he got out of the car to approach her, she whispered two words.

"Aidez moi."

There was room for her in the back seat. He ignored the grumbling of the other passengers and resumed driving. An hour to Niamey; he let everyone but the girl out blocks away from the motor park and turned the car around. Traveling toward Zinder, he stopped at approximately the spot where he'd found her and once again pulled over. He fished a bottled water out of the glove box and handed it to her.

"Do you speak English?"

No response.

"Is there anyone left?" His grip on the steering wheel tightened involuntarily. "In your village. Is there anyone left alive?" Finally she nodded once. "How many came back? After they were dead. How many?"

"One." She looked down at the water in her hand, dazed and blank.

"Your family?"

She shook her head, the first signs of sadness appearing. The water bottle lolled against her forearm. He could see the signs of dehydration in her skin and lips, knew she must be near delirious with it. Either she was too weak to lift the bottle or she'd lost the will to survive.

"Does anyone in your village know how to kill them?"

Blinking with surprise, she met his gaze squarely for the first time. "Ils ne meurent pas."

"Believe me, they do. I can tell you how." He looked away to avoid seeing the tears forming in her eyes. There was no reason to ask her name, he neither needed nor wanted to know what it was. That would only make watching her die harder on him. "Drink. And climb into the front seat, show me the way to your village."

Clumsily switching to the front seat, her hands trembled as she unscrewed the cap on the bottle. Not a single drop was wasted. She gestured with her hands to give him directions, occasionally speaking to him in Hausa but quickly learning that he only understood the basics of that language.

There was a dirt road off of Route One and more of the endless flat land with bushes, the odd tree, and more dust. He had to drive slowly over the rutted and pocked earth, avoiding dips, jutting rocks, and quagmires of desert sand. It took them nearly an hour to arrive at the village. She must have been in shock to have walked that far under the blazing sun. The village itself was more like a ghost town than someone's home. He heard shouting when he stopped the car and got out.

They had spears and hunting knives, that was a start. Even if they were pointed at him for the moment. Post vampire attack was never a good time to be the new kid in town. He kept his hands up, palms out, and let the girl do all of the talking in rapid Hausa. A word here, a phrase there; he knew the word for demon in a hundred languages. They turned away from him to converse amongst themselves and he nearly took the chance to bolt. No one could fault him for running away, at least, no one within several hundred miles. He was just human; he wasn't chosen or destined to fight vampires. This wasn't his village and it wasn't his fight.

It had never been his fight.

Those thoughts were pushed away with the closing of the window for escape. Voices were asking him questions and spears were still looking too ready to stab him if he sprouted fangs.

"They want know…how to kill." The girl told him brokenly.

"Pay attention. May I?" He reached for one of the spears and looked for a patch of sand to use as a canvas. The first stick figure had over-sized fangs to represent a vampire. Stick figure number two's head was on the ground, number three had a stake through its heart, and number four was lying dead under a smiling sun. The men scrutinized the sand drawings. He went back to the car for a stake, demonstrating where to strike. That seemed to spur some sort of understanding in them and they began speaking heatedly to each other.

"Don't invite them inside. Ne les invitez pas…and my work here is done." He wiped away the stick figures and started to leave.

"Attente! S'il vous plait!" The girl came after him.

"I've had enough people die for one lifetime, I don't want any more. You know how to kill them…good luck. I don't do this anymore." He watched her struggle to piece together words with as little English as he had Hausa, barely hearing her fragmented pleas for help. Just because he knew how to kill them didn't mean he cared to try.

With a heavy sigh, he looked around at the thatched huts and weary faces staring him. More than one of them had blood on their clothes and necks. They had fought hard just to stay alive and he was a little shocked that any of them had survived. It was doubtful a vampire raiding party would attack the same settlement two nights in a row; they were probably long gone by now. That didn't support his desire to leave so it wasn't helping him any. He reluctantly allowed himself to be led through the cluster of beehive shaped huts, swallowing hard when he realized what he was seeing.

Bodies had been wrapped lovingly in rich fabric; makeshift tents set up to shade the living as they constructed a burial mound for those who had left corpses. Experience had taught him to be wary of the dead. From the size of the village and the number of dead, he realized that they had been decimated. There were more dead than alive and most of the survivors were women and children. The men had died trying to protect their families.

"I don't want to see to this," he said to no one in particular, stomach churning at the sight and the smell. They were looking to him for help, for answers, and he had nothing to give them. He couldn't tell them why they had lived and others had died, why the vampires had chosen them as dinner. He didn't even know how to tell them that it wasn't personal; it was just about survival. They were on the menu, simple as that.

"S'il vous plait, monsieur." The girl was gripping the water bottle tight enough for the plastic to buckle.

"I can't help you." He turned away and started back toward the car. "Maybe I could show you how to whittle a stake but you're human. They're faster, stronger, and you're their food. Vous comprendez?"

"Monsieur." She trailed after him determinedly.

"You'll need wood. Bows and arrows? Is anyone here a good shot in the dark? And fire. Feu? They probably won't come back so you don't need me." The scarf around his neck was suddenly uncomfortably tight. He struggled to undo the knot, balling it into his hand in an attempt to hide the fabric from view. There were still stains from the blood he hadn't been able to wash out. The blood of someone who could have helped these people, who should have been there to help them and would have if he'd left well enough alone.

Dark eyes were still staring up at him like the lost little puppy he was trying to send off to the pound to be put to sleep. He thought he'd stopped seeing Muna's face, her ghost, in the weeks of driving Hell's highways. Now, his mind was pulling out all the stops and he not only saw her pleading with him, he saw all of the dead he'd collected standing behind her with blank eyes staring at him. Rubbing his eye didn't help, they were still there when he looked back up and he had to face the fact that he'd gone completely round the bend.

"Fine! But this is where you get off. No more following Xander around with the staring thing!" He ignored the puzzled looks of the villagers around him. "We're going to need wood and lots of it. Rope, if you've got it."

There were a few hours until the sun started to wane and night began. He planned to be long gone when dusk hit, with all of the dead far behind him. The Reaper was ready to unload a few souls via an act of good karma. He'd dug enough graves for one lifetime and had no intention of sticking around to add to that burial mound. The villagers had a small supply of tools and he set them to tasks with vaguely sketched directions in the sand. A few of them knew bits of English and French, so they managed to struggle through with creative hand gestures and stick figures.

He was whittling his fifteenth stake when he realized that the reason he was having a hard time seeing was because the sun was dipping down over the horizon. Working hurriedly, he finished off the stake and brushed the shavings off of his robe. When he stood up, he saw the others working stoically and steadfastly on their own stakes. They had gathered every one of their bows and arrows, the tips wrapped in dried grain and tied with bits of twine. Their precious store of wood was assembled to feed a small fire, just enough to act as an undead bug zapper and light the arrows. He made a mental note to bring them more when he returned to check on whoever was left. Preferably with the sun still in the sky.

"They probably won't come back." It was hollow comfort considering how many they'd lost the night before and it was a lousy way to say goodbye. They murmured goodbyes and well wishes as he left. Everything useful he had was now theirs and, sadly, that consisted of Vampire Slaying one-oh-one. The sidekick was never supposed to fight the Big Evil, he was just supposed to provide the comic relief and possibly hit something with a frying pan.

If he thought about it, he could probably trace his craziness back to when he'd stopping being content with his sidekick status, when he'd tried to take a step out of that mold. Go collect Slayers on your own, Giles said. You'll be fine, Buffy said. Both of them had indoor plumbing, safe houses, and real weapons. What he'd give for a good battle-axe. He squashed the guilt pooling in his stomach and drove faster than was wise down the dirt road toward Route One. Sunlight could be measured in minutes now; this was no place to be when night dug its claws into the earth.

A shape, about the size of a dog, darted in front of his car and caused him to swerve. The car went up and over a rock with an ugly scraping sound between metal and stone. His heart thudded in his chest, brakes squealing as he stopped. Just an animal, just an animal. Dust swirled through his headlights, the sun long gone and leaving the world to the shadows. He could have sworn he saw Muna standing on the road ahead. He shook his head several times, trying to shake the image out of his mind, the sound of her laughter out of his head.

"I can't help them," he told the silence around him. "I've done everything I can. I'm not the Slayer." No one answered him and he didn't actually expect an answer.

The night brought relief from the sun, the incessant heat that boiled blood and addled brains. He felt exposed, far off the familiar roads that seemed safer than the middle of nowhere. With the engine idling and the barest caress of a breeze cooling the sweat on his face, he stared into the night and for the first since he'd set foot on the continent, it stared back.

There was a quote in his mind somewhere about looking into the abyss and the abyss looking back into him. Beneath that was an object lesson that he hadn't learned. He'd always thought it was about knowing the nature of evil, being able to stare it down at the price of evil learning about him. It had never worried him before. What did evil have to fear from Xander Harris, zeppo and all time screw up? What did the abyss see when it stared back into him?

He fingered the gris-gris around his neck and thought of the man it had belonged to; the real owner of the Peugeot and the man who should have been behind the wheel instead of him. His mind cleared some of the fog he'd been living in, enough to wonder if he had truly gone insane. It had been comforting to hide in the madness of the desert, driving Route One with Captain Paul Voulet's ghosts trailing behind him. As if he could actually put those souls to rest just by driving up and down the same road.

"What the hell." He cranked the wheel of the battered Peugeot, dirt spinning as the tires cut into the desert. Niger was a good a place as any to start fertilizing the flora; it certainly could use the help. What did he have to lose? A car that wasn't his and a life that consisted of hard-boiled eggs, red peppers, and driving a haunted highway.

The headlights lit up the outlying huts as the village came into view, the faint light of a flickering fire at the center. He skidded to a halt and leapt out of the car with stake in hand. There was one man at the center, acting as a decoy just as Xander had mimed for them to do; the rest would be inside their huts in relative safety. He dodged a stake in the doorway of the nearest hut.

"Whoa, there! That was good. Next time, aim a little higher." He readjusted the man's angle as he stepped inside. "Couldn't let you guys have all the fun."

He was still half convinced that the vampires wouldn't strike the same village twice but the undead weren't exactly known for their deductive reasoning skills. There couldn't be many of them. They weren't exactly big on sharing and people would be higher on the food list than converting to the undead list in a place where food was scarce. Against two or three vamps and they might have a chance of living through it.

A game of hurry up and wait ensued, broken up by intervals of stretching and cracking joints when sitting in one place extended for too long. Minus the cramping and the scratchy eyeball peering into the darkness, it was positively riveting. By what felt like two in the morning he was wishing for Doritos and someone to trade late night patrolling quips with. Come dawn he would be feeling ridiculous for charging in to be the hero when no one needed saving.

He heard a howl that set the hair on the back of his neck on end. Someone had just found themselves tangled in one of his snares. It wouldn't stop a vampire but it would slow them down. He took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the stake, and edged to doorway to peer out. The decoy was still sitting near the fire, the spear in his hands shaking badly enough to be seen fifty feet away.

Xander kept his gaze moving, watching for shadows with odd shapes moving in ways they shouldn't. An idea of how many and where they were. The snares would slow them down and the decoy would draw them into the center of the village. Surprise might be the only advantage, however brief, that they had. Three, four, maybe more. He could hear growling; the angry and hungry kind of growling that gave him just the barest hope for getting out alive. Anger usually made them even more stupid than normal. Maybe they'd gloat for a bit, that would be just like old times.

The first vampire finally stepped out of the shadows, just enough light from the moon and blazing stars overhead to illuminate his outline and broad features. Even the demons in this country were emaciated, wearing the title of Walking Dead with a flair for the macabre. There were four of them; dressed in dark robes with only fangs and eyes truly visible in the darkness. Secure in their superiority over the weaker humans, they carried no weapons and closed in around the decoy with cruel smiles.

Just when the suspense had nearly become too much for him to bear, the decoy shouted into the night and drove his spear into the fire. Bundled grain and twigs caught fire, blazing suddenly. He swung the spear around him, halting the approach of the vampires, and screamed again as he lunged forward to drive the spear into the chest of one of the vampires.

Xander grimaced as it missed the heart by inches; humans didn't have the luxury of making mistakes. The rest of the villagers poured out of their huts with spears, arrows, and stakes. They threw rocks and gourds, even bags of dust meant to open on impact and blind the enemy. It took seconds for the vampires to regroup and start attacking everything that moved. Mud cracked and thatch went up in flames, filling the air with oily smoke.

A large rock to the head sent one of the vampires to the ground, shaking his head dazedly. Xander was there in an instant, driving his stake into its back as hard as his could. Splinters cut into his palm but his pain was rewarded with a burst of dust at his feet. One down.

Unearthly howling made his skin crawl; one of the vampires' robes had caught fire and the creature was flailing against the flames licking at his skin. Xander grabbed a spear from the hands of a dead villager, driving it through the burning vampire's torso and pinning him to one of the mud huts to burn. Shrieking with pain and rage, it managed to land a solid kick that sent Xander flying back. Breath knocked out of him from the impact with the earth, he barely rolled out of the way when another body came hurtling through the night toward him.

They'd managed to kill two vampires, a third was cowering blindly under a hailstorm of stones and dust, but the forth was tossing people away with furious snarls. Xander crept around the side of the hut, peeking around the corner in time to see it snatch one of the men and sink its fangs into his neck.

"Hey!" The fist-sized rock hit the vampire square in the forehead. It couldn't have hurt much but it was enough to make him let go of the man and focus on Xander. He shouted all the insults he'd managed to learn in French during his stay in Niger, ignoring the increase in growling as the vampire stalked toward him. Stumbling backwards, he kept taunting the creature while he led him away from the center of the village and the rest of the people.

There was light enough from the stars and moon that the desert was silvery around him and the outline of the battered Peugeot glistened. He was running now, imagining the sensation of hands catching him and fangs cutting through his skin. It was half a slide and half a dive into the car. Metal clanged loudly as the vampire leapt onto the hood of the car and punched through the windshield.

Xander dodged the groping fist and fumbled with the key in the ignition. The engine whined to life, headlights illuminating the village ahead of him. He threw the car into reverse, pulling the wheel back and forth to keep the vampire off balance. When he hit the brake, a head plunged through the broken windshield and the vampire spit blood and glass at him. He swung the car around, simultaneously smacking the vampire on the head with the tire iron, and floored the accelerator. Dirt flew, tires spun, and he was racing off toward Route One through the moonlit night. Miles flew by, measured in heartbeats and snarled threats pertaining to his throat. He hit the vampire again as they bumped onto the highway, tires squealing as he cranked the wheel. It glowered at him from the windshield, shaking freshly loosened glass out of its hair.

"Thought you might want to go for a drive," Xander shouted over the wind and the engine. He could barely see anything through the cracks in the windshield, peering through the hole the vampire had made with his fist to see if he was in the right lane. The vampire growled and got another smack to the head for his trouble. "The whole attacking innocent people thing? I'm really not a fan. Not that you care, you're just a demon, a parasite."

More growling.

"I guess I could just drive until the sun comes up." That seemed to get the creature's attention and it looked wary for the first time. Xander grinned at it. "You really should see a sunrise on Route One, it's spectacular. What? Not your thing? That's too bad." He hit the vampire a few more times until its head bowed and didn't raise back up.

Relative peace gave him a moment to readjust his grip on the wheel and the tire iron and to consider his situation fully for the first time. He had no idea when dawn would arrive but he couldn't drive into Niamey with a vampire stuck through his windshield and there were headlights coming down the road the other way. The best option would be to pull over and dust the creature before someone saw him driving with a body on his hood. He poked at the head with apprehension, knowing that the sleeping routine could be just another trick. There was no response.

"Hello? That's not very nice, falling asleep on me there." He poked it again and when there was still no response, he eased off on the gas to begin slowing down.

It must have been waiting for him to do just that, playing opossum until it though Xander wasn't paying attention. Inhumanly strong fingers clamped around the steering wheel, tugging against him and trying to send the car careening off into the desert. He heard the tires squeal as the car swerved, fighting for control over the steering wheel with both hands.

He saw the headlights ahead of them get suddenly bright, heard screeching and howling before a gigantic invisible fist hit him squarely in the chest. Everything went black. He could taste oil and blood in mouth and hear the screaming of someone dying.

Maybe this is what he'd been hoping for, driving up and down Route One with the reckless abandon of someone who had nothing to go back to. Maybe he'd been hoping all along that this demon road would open up and swallow him down into nothingness. There was pain. Too much to tell where it was coming from and why. Too much heat and blood and oil. The sun had risen early just to taunt him, to shrivel him up and turn him to dust along with the vampire.

"Xander. You have to move." It was a familiar voice but he couldn't find a name inside his spinning head. "Now, Xander. You have to move now."

Somehow he did. He was crawling blindly on hands and knees, gris-gris clutched in one hand. Bushes scratched his face and he could smell the earth beneath him. The voice urged him on, telling him to keep going and keep going until his lungs burned and he couldn't move another inch.

"You're going to be all right, Xander," the voice whispered.

He fell to his side, rolling onto his back in an attempt to ease some of the pain. It was too much to even blink, his eyeball felt like it was on fire and he wasn't sure if it was blood or tears running down his face. He could feel someone there, whoever it was who had coaxed him out of the car. Hot air rushed past him smelling of gasoline and death.

"You're going to be just fine. I'll stay with you until they get here."

"I think I was supposed to die. Back there." He coughed against the dirt and blood in his throat.

"You can't keep punishing yourself, Xander. It wasn't your fault that Muna died. You didn't fail her. It's so like you to run away from your problems, to wallow in your misery. Did you think I'd forget?"

"Anya?" He finally recognized her voice and reached out to find her.

"You can't feel me. I'm dead, Xander. You're not. At least not yet and you're not supposed to die on me in some middle of nowhere African country. You have to hang on."

"I don't understand."

"They've been looking for you, the others. Buffy and Giles. They've been searching for weeks while you've been off gallivanting around pretending to be a taxi driver. They need you."

He shook his head. It was getting cold now and pain was fading to numb. He couldn't feel the ground beneath him, almost as if he was floating on a cloud high above the earth. This was it. He could feel Death creeping down from Route One to collect another soul that would haunt the highway forever. His soul.

"Do you remember our wedding day?" Anya's voice cut through the haze. "Do you remember my dress? All those little flowers. And you looked so handsome in your tux. Your parents got drunk and I'd invited all my demon friends, like that's going to go over well at any wedding with humans involved."

"There was this guy…" he trailed off. The memories were surprisingly vivid even with years past and blows to the head.

"Who wasn't real. And then you had go all noble on me."

"Noble?" He would have laughed if his lungs hadn't turned to jello at some point.

"Well, you thought you were being noble and saving me from a life with you when all you were really doing was being a scared little boy. That's what you do, you get scared and then you run away."

He didn't have an answer for that one. If he hadn't run away from the market where Muna had died, he wouldn't be lying in the desert waiting to die. Vaguely remembering that there had been a vampire on the hood of his car, he tipped his head toward where he thought Anya was. "Is it dead? The vampire."

"Yes, they're all dead. Some of the villagers made it. The little girl is still alive. I think she'll be just fine once those wounds heal."

"Good."

"I never understood why you insist on fighting vampires. Why not let the Slayers handle it? It's not your sacred calling. You were supposed to be my husband and we were supposed to have a family. A nice, normal family. We were supposed to grow old together and die peacefully in our sleep in a retirement community in Florida."

His lips cracked as he smiled. "I miss you, Ahn."

"I know you do."

"Take me with you. I'm tired…so tired."

"I wish I could, Xander. I wish I could."

It might have been his imagination but he thought he felt her take his hand and kiss his forehead. He could smell her perfume and the shampoo she had decided on after trying every bottle on the shelf. Her hair had always been so soft, curling around his fingers the way her hand was now. Having her there was more comforting than he could have imagined, just to not be alone when he died suddenly meant the world to him.

He wondered if Muna had felt the same way, if she had been glad he was there to hold her. The sting in his eye this time was definitely due to tears, his breath catching in his throat as he tried to blink them away. What good would crying do anyone? It wouldn't bring her back and it wouldn't keep him alive.

A soft hand stroked his face. "It's okay, Xander. I won't tell anyone you cried."

The half laugh and half sob nearly choked him. He shook as he cried, holding her hand tightly as he curled onto his side. Tears and blood soaked into the dirt beneath his pummeled body. She was whispering in his ear, pleading with him to stay awake, to listen to her voice and stay with her. He tried to listen but her words got softer and softer and the feel of her skin faded away.

Then there was only the silence of the desert.


End file.
